When Computerworld was founded in 1967, a 1-megabyte hard drive would have set you back by $1 million.

Today, that same megabyte of capacity on a hard disk drive (HDD) costs about two cents.

Through those five decades, data storage was seen as little more than a support technology, when in actuality has always been one of five tech pillars — like processors and software — underpinning our modern computer systems, said Owen Melroy, vice president of Media Components at Western Digital Corp. (WD).

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