Not too many gadgets hit the age of 50, especially in the world of computers, but the hard drive is still going strong at 50 years of age!

(I never would have guessed!)

(An age that many may feel depressed about while looking longily at retirement, which looms not that far on the horizon).

Now, analysts are predicting that more drives will be sold over the next five years than in all the previous years combined.

The hard drive has become ubiquitous, being used in everything from iPods to TiVos to cars (that sounds funny)-- and still in computers, for that matter.

Nice brief from CEA Smartbriefs, which points to the always reliable The Mercury News, which has the whole great story.

And yes, that big bad thing to the left is the first hard drive, with 50 spinning, 24-inch-wide disks covered with red paint.

(Like the red paint touch -- wonder why they picked that color?  After all, it was an IBM product that came out of the lab in Silicon Valley -- San Jose, to be exact).