A stored program-controlled electronic switching system (ESS) requires a large-capacity memory to store various kinds of programs and data. This paper describes a hierarchy arrangement including a high-speed memory and a low-cost largecapacity magnetic-drum memory for reduction of the cost of the ESS. The paper also describes the design philosophy, reliability, structure, and evaluation of the system. A magnetic drum with hydrodynamic floating heads (memory capacity:3.7 \times 10^{7}bits, clock rate: 2.2 MHz) was employed. The magnetic-drum memory system can provide transfer of individual words (each consisting of 41 bits), transfer of variable-length data by flag bit control, and content-addressable access. Furthermore, the system is designed to be most suitable for transfer of the large amount of data required by the switching system. The data throughput of the magnetic-drum memory system is 210 kbytes/s in a burst mode. The mean time between failures (MTBF) of the system is approximately3.5 \times 10^{3}h. This system assures reliability required for the ESS and high performance for application of the ESS to stored data switching as well as telephone switching.