Introduced by IBM in 1973 as the model 3340, the Winchester disk drive was a hard drive. It had 30 MB of fixed and 30 MB of removable storage; thus earning its nickname after the Winchester 30-30 rifle.

It featured a smaller, lighter read/write head that was designed to ride on an air film only 18 millionths of an inch thick. The disks also had a 30 ms access time, and lubricated coating allowing the heads to remain in contact with the surface when rotation speed changes. After the Winchester, lubricated coating became the standard for mechanical hard drive development.

Hard drive terms, MB

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