What is a Hard Drive?

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The hard drive (HDD) is the most and usually the largest hardware device for storing important data in a computer. This is a type of technology that stores the operating system, applications, and data files such as pictures, documents, and music used by your computer. The rest of your computer's components work together to show you the applications and files stored on your hard drive.

The hard drive is sometimes referred to as the "C drive" because, by default MS Windows assigns the drive letter "C" to the primary partition on a computer's main hard drive.

Although this is not a technically correct term, it is still widely used. For ex - some computers have multiple drive letters (for ex- C, D, & E) that represent ranges on one or more hard drives. HDD is also called hard drive, hard disk, mechanical hard drive, magnetic hard drive, fixed drive, & hard disk drive.

Despite of what it's called, the primary hard drive usually contains the root folder of the operating system being used.

What is the Physical Description of a Hard Drive?

The hard drive sides have pre-drilled threaded holes for easy mounting in the 3.5" drive bay in your computer case. It can also be mounted in a smaller 2.5" drive & in a drive bay larger than 5.25" with an adapter. The HDD is mounted with the connector end facing the computer. Laptops often use a 2.5-inch HDD or SSD.

The hard drive rear ends contains a connector for a cable that connects to the motherboard. The type of cable used (SATA or PATA) depends on the type of drive, but most hard drive purchases include them. There is also a connection for power from the power supply.

On the backend, most hard drives also have jumper settings that define how the motherboard should recognize the drive when more than one drive is present.

How Does a Hard Drive Work?

A hard drive retains its data even when powered off, unlike volatile memory like RAM. Because of this, you can restart a computer which slows down the hard drive but retains access to all data when it is turned back on.

A HDD is composed of a platter that contains compartments to hold data (like operating system applications & any files you have created). There are sectors on rails inside the hard drive that are stored on spinning platters and these platters have magnetic heads that move with an actuator arm to read and write data to the drive.

How Many Types of Hard Drives are There?

There are many different sizes of hard drives, some very small and some quite large. The standard flash drive also has a hard drive, but it doesn’t spin like a traditional hard drive. Flash drives are sometimes called solid state drives & connect to the computer via USB. There are also hybrids called SSHD.

External hard drive is another USB hard drive, which is a normal hard drive in its own box, so it exists safely outside of the computer case. They connect to the computer via USB. Some use eSATA or FireWire.

How Much Storage Capacity does a Hard Drive Have?

The capacity of a hard disk is an important factor in deciding whether someone will buy a particular device, such as a laptop or a phone. Different hard drives have different storage capacities. If the storage has small capacity, means that it will fill up with files faster, whereas a drive with more space can handle a lot more data.

The main unit of measurement is the GB (Gigabyte) of a hard drive, which has 1000 MB (Megabytes). Most modern HDDs offer storage of a few TB (Terabytes). 1 TB equals 1000 GBs. Choosing a hard drive based on the amount of space it can hold is really a matter of opinion and circumstance. For example, if you need a tablet that can shoot a lot of videos, you should definitely choose the 64GB tablet instead of the 8GB tablet.

The same applies to computer hard drives. If you are someone who saves a lot of images, HD videos, or have most of your files backed up online. Then a preference for offline storage at home may lead you to buy an internal or external hard drive that supports 4TB instead of a 500GB hard drive.

What are the Tasks of General Disk?

The easy thing is to do with a hard drive is to check how much free space is left on it. This is especially important if you're getting low disk space messages, but it's just as important for keeping your system running smoothly. You can uninstall large or unwanted programs and delete files or copy them to another location when disk space is low.

The primary partition on a hard drive is usually named “C” & can’t be changed, you can change the letter on an external hard drive from ‘P’ to ‘L’ (or any other letter).

Before you can install an operating system or save files you must format the drive or partition it into sections. When installing the OS for the first time, a new hard drive is usually formatted and a file system is assigned to it. Otherwise, Disk partitioning tool, it is common way to manipulate the drive in this way

You can protect the data on your hard drive with a disk encryption program. Only after entering a specific password, the data will be decrypted & can be read/used.

Troubleshooting Hard Drives

Every time you do something that reads or writes data to the hard drive. It is common to encounter a problem with the device at some point. Your computer uses the hard drive over and over again. The most common problem is a noisy hard drive, & the best first step in troubleshooting a hard drive malfunction of any kind is to perform a hard drive test.

Windows includes a built-in tool called chkdsk that helps identify and possibly even fix various hard drive errors. Many programs that are free, can test a hard drive for problems that may ultimately cause you to need to replace the hard drive.

If you want to buy a new hard drive -

Seagate, Western Digital, Hitachi and Toshiba are some of the most popular hard drive manufacturers. You can buy hard drives from these brands & from other manufacturers in stores & online, e.g. through company websites & websites such as Amazon.

Check out this up-to-date lists of the best hard drives of all types:

  • SATA hard drives

  • USB flash drives

  • External hard drives and SSDs

  • PS4 hard drives

  • Gaming hard drives

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