All Things You Need To Know About HDD

A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive or fixed disk, what you called all are the same thing and mainly it used to store data. So, mainly a hard disk is a computer storage device which can store up to 10 Terabytes of data in a single 3.5-inch disk drive.




Actually, the history of HDD is around 60 years old and the first hard disk was made by a well know company called IBM and they invented the first hard disk drive back in the 1950s and from that time the disk drivers starts became the leading secondary storage device for all non-volatile computer storage purpose in the early 1960s all computer system starts to having at least one single disk drive in it.

The name of a first hard disk drive is “IBM 350” which can only contain 5 million 6-bit characters (likely 3.75 MB) of data storage capacity in there Fifty 25 inches diameter double-sided record disk surface, and yes 50 disk platter and it’s be like you can only store one photograph in that whole hard disk’s storage area. And when I look at that hard disk for the first time in the museum, I really can’t believe my eyes because it looks like a size of two refrigerators.

Different abbreviations of HDD:

  • Hard disk
  • Hard drive
  • Fixed drive
  • Fixed disk
  • Fixed disk drives





But today, a normal hard disk comes in the size of only 3.5 inches diagonally who mainly used for desktops and the smaller once comes in the size of 2.5 inches diagonally which mainly we all used in our laptop’s computers.

There are two only types of HDD available in the market and those are internal and external HDD. The internal hard drive installed in your desktop or laptop computer where the external hard drives connected to your computer or laptop via USB to use it as external storage device.

The internal hard drives can store and process the data of the computer where the external hard drives are usually used to stored media especially for backing up files or maybe setup for the network storage sharing. The external drives are also called Removable Hard Drives.

The internal hard drives generally use two ports: data ports and power port. The data port is used for advanced technology attachment which helps your computer to interact with the disk drive and process the data and the power port is used for connecting the electricity power attachment to supply the power to the disk drive to make it working.

#Parts of Hard Disk Drive:

Platters: is a metal disk of a hard disk which is mounted inside the hard disk casing. All the data what you saved in your hard disk is mainly written on this platter which is made up of aluminum or glass substrate, covered with a thin layer of Ferric oxide or cobalt alloy. All the platter disk comes with both side data writing compatibility where all the written data is stored in very tiny particular columns by defining magnetic pole directions.

Spindle Motor: is a motor attached to your hard disk’s platter and plays a very important role by rotating the disk as fast as it can to spin the disk in proper rotating condition to help the head to read and write the disk properly. A spindle motor can provide stable, reliable, and consistent turning power for many hours of continuous use.

Read/Write Heads: is the part of a hard disk who mainly responsible for all your data reading and writing process. The head uses magnetic data storage technology who do all the magnetic pole direction thing on the platter to store the data in small magnetic columns.

Actuator Arm: is a read and write head’s mechanical arm who helps the head to move easily on the hard disk platter on a particular distance ratio. Actually, this arm also holds the head in that way so, a head can’t be able to touch the platter and move freely.

Actuator: is an electronic device controlled by a magnetic system that holds and moves the hard drive head arm at lightning fast speed.

Hard Disk Logic Board: is an intelligent printed circuit board which is stick on the back of the hard disk’s casing. All the read and write process is controlled by this PCB and that’s the part of a hard disk which mainly connects the hard disk to the computer’s motherboard by the use of single interface cable.

#How Hard Disk Drives Works?

Actually, It takes me so much time to make you understand “how a hard disk drive work?” so, I think it’s better linked a great animated video which will really gonna help you to out to know everything related to a hard disk working properties by only spending a couple of minutes. As you can see listed below:

Magnetic storage media and devices store data in the form of tiny magnetized dots. These dots are created, read and erased using magnetic fields created by very tiny electromagnets and after watching the video I think now you do know about the magnetism technique what every harddisk is using from the beginning of its making and if you do curious about this Magnetism Data Storage technique then this another listed video down below will help you out to know everything about that.

#Different Sizes Of A Harddisk

There are three different sizes of hard disk are available in the market and the first one is 3.5 inches normal hard disk which mainly uses in the desktop computers and the second one is 2.5 inches hard disk drive which mainly uses in laptop computers and at last the third one is also comes for the laptop too but it is 2.5MM thinner than the normal one where mainly the normal comes 9.5mm thin and another thinner one comes in 7mm of height.

#How To Analyze Hard Disk Drive’s Performance?

So, now let’s move to the era of the latest hard disk because nowadays people don’t care about how the things work or about their history and the main things what they all care about is Speed and Capacity. Everybody needs higher storage capacity to storage all the huge amount of data in it what we all use to use daily and the other main is a performance to storage all the data as fast as it can.

Finding the hard disk performance is very simple and by looking over the HDD’s specification you can easily identify the actual performance what that hard disk drive gonna deliver while using it and that main noticeable specification what you’ll need to look over are:

RPM Hard disk is made up with using a disk motor and some rewritable disk platter and the reader or write who process all the data structure. And the hard disk whole performance is all depending on how fast that motor runs to do this reading writing processor more quicker and that’s the reason why there are different types of motor are available in the market which mainly described as a RPM speed of the hard disk, RMP means round per minute of disk rotation and if a hard disk specification tells your 7200RPM that means it will gonna run at the speed of 7200 round per minute.

CacheHDD cache or you can say disk buffer both are the same thing and mainly used to process current process data and the only thing what you’ll need to remember is, the higher the cache size is the disk will perform that better.

SATA InterfaceThere are two types of SATA interface is available in the market nowadays and the first one is SATA 2.0 which delivers you the 3 Gb/second of data transferring speed and the second one is SATA 3.0 which provides you up to 6Gb/second of speed while transferring the data.

Key To Note For All Three Things: Higher the number is better.



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