Winchester disks reach for a gigabyte: Poised for a 200-fold increase in capacity over initial models of six years ago, 5 1/4-inch hard disks are emerging as major elements for small-system designs

When the 5 1/4-inch Winchester rigid disk drive was first shipped in 1980, its capacity was 5 megabytes. Today drives the same size store as much as 760 megabytes of data in a space hardly larger than a thick paperback book. Nor has the limit been reached. Within a year or two these drives are expected to hold more than a gigabyte of data.