WHAT IS A HARD DISK The hard disk drive is the main, and usually largest, data storage device

in a c omputer. The operating system, software titles and most other files are stored i n the hard disk drive. A hard drive, also known as a hard disk drive or HDD, is a fundamental part of m odern computers. The hard drive is where all of your programs and files are stor ed, so if the drive is damaged for some reason, you will lose everything on your computer. The hard drive is sometimes referred to as the "C drive" due to the fact that Mi crosoft Windows designates the "C" drive letter to the primary partition on the primary hard drive in a computer by default. While this is not a technically correct term to use, it is still common. For exa mple, some computers have multiple drive letters (i.e. C, D, E) representing are as across one or more hard drives. A hard drive uses similar memory storage technology to cassette tapes and video tapes. You may already know that tapes store information on long, thin strips of tape with a delicate magnetic material on its surface. Likewise, hard drives co ntain round, mirror-like platters that are covered with that same magnetic recor ding medium. The platters inside a hard disk drive are usually made of glass or aluminum. It is the polished magnetic material on the surface that makes the platter appear s hiny, like a mirror. A clean, polished surface is critical to the proper functio ning of the hard drive even the smallest spec of dust can cause irreparable dama ge. Just as a head inside of your cassette player or VHS player reads the data on th e tape, a head inside your hard disk drive reads and writes data to the platters . This head is on an arm that is attached next to the platters, so that it can p ivot back and forth over the them. The average modern hard disk drive has several platters inside of it, stacked e on top of the other, like an Oreo cookie. There is a small gap between each atter, which allows each platter s head to pass over it. The heads are all on same arm, which has a separate branch for each head, rather like the tines of fork turned on its side. on pl the a

When you turn your computer on, the platters immediately begin to spin. The plat ters in a desktop computer hard disk drive typically get up to about 7,200 rotat ions per minute (rpm), while the hard drives in laptop computers usually run at 5,400 rpm. You may be able to hear the steady hum of your hard drive when the fa n is not running. When your computer is on but you are not retrieving or writing anything to the m emory, the platters in the hard disk drive are always spinning. The arm with the heads on it, however, only begins to move when you run a program or open, save, or delete a file. This arm can move back and forth across the surface of the pl atter as many as 50 times in a single second, causing it to appear as a blur if you ever have the opportunity to watch. Because everything in the hard disk driv e moves so quickly, the head never actually touches the platters, instead skimmi ng just barely above them, supported by a cushion of moving air that is generate d by the platters spinning. The rapid motion of the platters and heads inside your hard disk drive make it s usceptible to head crash, which is where the heads crash into the platters. Severa

l different things can cause head crash. If dust gets into your hard drive and s ettles on the platters, it can actually cause the arm to bounce as the disk oper ates. The magnetic recording medium is extremely fragile, and is often ruined wh en the heads crash into the platters. People who use laptops should also be very careful, as moving your laptop abrupt ly can cause head crash. Anytime you move your laptop when it is on, you should pick it up and set it down very gently. If you do not, eventually your hard disk drive may quit working altogether. POPULAR HARD DISK DRIVE MANUFACTURERS:Seagate, Western Digital, Hitachi HOW HARD DISK WORK Nearly every desktop computer and server in use today contains one or more harddisk drives. Every mainframe and supercomputer is normally connected to hundreds of them. You can even find VCR-type devices and camcorders that use hard disks instead of tape. These billions of hard disks do one thing well -- they store ch anging digital information in a relatively permanent form. They give computers t he ability to remember things when the power goes out. HARD DISK BASICS Hard disks were invented in the 1950s. They started as large disks up to 20 inch es in diameter holding just a few megabytes. They were originally called "fixed disks" or "Winchesters" (a code name used for a popular IBM product). They later became known as "hard disks" to distinguish them from "floppy disks." Hard disk s have a hard platter that holds the magnetic medium, as opposed to the flexible plastic film found in tapes and floppies. At the simplest level, a hard disk is not that different from a cassette tape. B oth hard disks and cassette tapes use the same magnetic recording techniques des cribed in How Tape Recorders Work. Hard disks and cassette tapes also share the major benefits of magnetic storage -- the magnetic medium can be easily erased a nd rewritten, and it will "remember" the magnetic flux patterns stored onto the medium for many years. Capacity and Performance A typical desktop machine will have a hard disk with a capacity of between 10 an d 40 gigabytes. Data is stored onto the disk in the form of files. A file is sim ply a named collection of bytes. The bytes might be the ASCII codes for the char acters of a text file, or they could be the instructions of a software applicati on for the computer to execute, or they could be the records of a data base, or they could be the pixel colors for a GIF image. No matter what it contains, howe ver, a file is simply a string of bytes. When a program running on the computer requests a file, the hard disk retrieves its bytes and sends them to the CPU one at a time. There are two ways to measure the performance of a hard disk: * Data rate - The data rate is the number of bytes per second that the drive can deliver to the CPU. Rates between 5 and 40 megabytes per second are common. * Seek time - The seek time is the amount of time between when the CPU reque sts a file and when the first byte of the file is sent to the CPU. Times between 10 and 20 milliseconds are common. The other important parameter is the capacity of the drive, which is the number

of bytes it can hold. Inside: Electronics Board The best way to understand how a hard disk works is to take a look inside. (Note that OPENING A HARD DISK RUINS IT, so this is not something to try at home unle ss you have a defunct drive.) Here is a typical hard-disk drive: It is a sealed aluminum box with controller electronics attached to one side. The electronics control the read/write mechanism and the motor that spins the platt ers. The electronics also assemble the magnetic domains on the drive into bytes (reading) and turn bytes into magnetic domains (writing). The electronics are al l contained on a small board that detaches from the rest of the drive: Underneath the board are the connections for the motor that spins the platters, as well as a highly-filtered vent hole that lets internal and external air press ures equalize: Removing the cover from the drive reveals an extremely simple but very precise i nterior: In this picture you can see: * The platters - These typically spin at 3,600 or 7,200 rpm when the drive i s operating. These platters are manufactured to amazing tolerances and are mirro r-smooth (as you can see in this interesting self-portrait of the author... no e asy way to avoid that!). * The arm - This holds the read/write heads and is controlled by the mechani sm in the upper-left corner. The arm is able to move the heads from the hub to t he edge of the drive. The arm and its movement mechanism are extremely light and fast. The arm on a typical hard-disk drive can move from hub to edge and back u p to 50 times per second -- it is an amazing thing to watch! Storing the Data Data is stored on the surface of a platter in sectors and tracks. Tracks are con centric circles, and sectors are pie-shaped wedges on a track, like this: A typical track is shown in yellow; a typical sector is shown in blue. A sector contains a fixed number of bytes -- for example, 256 or 512. Either at the drive or the operating system level, sectors are often grouped together into clusters . The process of low-level formatting a drive establishes the tracks and sectors o n the platter. The starting and ending points of each sector are written onto th e platter. This process prepares the drive to hold blocks of bytes. High-level f ormatting then writes the file-storage structures, like the file-allocation tabl e, into the sectors. This process prepares the drive to hold files.