hard drive history

Photo: Red Hill.

Samsung SpinPoint V9100

Typical Samsung drives from the modern era with the typical Samsung virtues. These were decently quick, very reasonably priced, and had a superb reliability record.

The 8.4GB drive in the V9100 series was a major seller here. 8GB was entry level by early 2000, and though 13 and 17GB drives were only a little more (perhaps $40 or so) for many people 8GB was enough. Indeed, if the greatly lowered number of hard drive upgrades we performed from about this time on was any guide, it was still enough for many users for many years to come.

Samsung, almost alone among the drive manufacturers at this time, seemed to be aware of the value of the entry-level. The 4.3GB V9100 was the last drive of this size to be available new. Obviously, it was not a volume-selling capacity by that time, but the demand for cheap, reliable little drives is always present. Indeed, it became still stronger as an ever-higher proportion of machines was networked. Many business systems (then and now) just needed enough hard drive to boot from and maybe store a handful of applications: anything more was simply wasted.