Terry Johnson (entrepreneur)

Terry Johnson (1935–2010) was an American engineer and entrepreneur notable for his work on hard disk drives (HDD) and for pioneering the transition of computers to using smaller disk drives.

After college in 1963, Johnson worked in engineering and management roles at IBM for seven years, followed by two years at Memorex. He then joined Disk Systems Corporation, which was acquired by Storage Technology Corporation (StorageTek or STC). At StorageTek, he helped develop the Super Disk, a hard disk drive (HDD) that had a storage capacity of 800 megabytes (MB), the highest available at the time.

In 1980, Johnson left StorageTek to establish a startup called Miniscribe, a manufacturer of 5.25-inch HDDs. After leaving Miniscribe in 1984, he co-founded a new company, CoData, that merged with Conner Peripherals the following year. CoData's 3.5-inch drive became the company's first product. Additionally, in 1985, Johnson co-founded PrairieTek, the first to manufacture smaller 2.5-inch drives.^{: 5, 8–9, 11}

Johnson died in the Northwest Territories, Canada, when his private aircraft crashed during his return from a canoe trip.