HDD is a data storage device - a hard disk drive. "HDD" is an abbreviation for the English phrase Hard Disk Drive. Other names for HDD: hard drive, hard drive, hard drive, screw, hard, tin, tin.

What is HDD for?

HDD is used to store information. Information stored on a hard drive is called data. The data on the disk is organized by means of a file system and is represented by files.

HDD is computer memory. Do not confuse with RAM. The hard drive is non-volatile memory, RAM is volatile.

Winchester is now the main storage device, and if you have a computer, then there is a screw.

Working principle of HDD

Hard drives, that is, HDDs, work in a similar way to a device that everyone has long forgotten about - a "player", with a rotating disk and a needle for playing music. The converting elements (read/write heads) used in hard drives are similar to the read/write heads used in VCRs and stereo cassette recorders to access information on magnetic media.

In hard drives, information is stored on a rotating metal or glass plate covered with a magnetic material. As a rule, a disk consists of several plates connected by a common rod - a spindle. Each plate is something like a vinyl record with a record played by a turntable. Information is usually stored on both sides of the plate.

As the disk spins, an element called the head reads or writes binary data to the magnetic media. Information is written to the disk using some encoding method, of which there are a great many. The encoding method and recording density is determined by the disk controller.

Without delving further into the description of the principle of operation of the HDD, we can say that the hard drive is, in fact, a super-player with a bunch (or maybe just one) of records inside. Although, of course, due to the complexity of the device, the player did not lie next to it.

The past and future of HDD

The very first HDD was developed by IBM in the early 70s.

In 1983, with the release of the first IBM PC / XT computer, a hard drive from Seagate Technology appeared in the lives of thousands of newly minted, yet wild users. The early hard drive interface, designed by Alan Shugart (founder of Seagate Technology), was the de facto standard for HDDs for many years. In the future, Seagate's developments formed the basis of the ESDI and IDE interfaces. Shugart also developed the SCSI interface, which is now used in many modern computers.

By the way, now Seagate hard drives are the best-selling in Europe. And in Russia, who does not know the famous Barracudas?

The most important direction in the development of hard disk technology has always been an increase in their (drives) capacity. Progress in this area is especially driven by the ever-increasing demands of software. Increasing the capacity of drives is possible either by increasing the size of the drives themselves or by increasing the density of data storage. The HDD size limit has been reached, but the storage density limit has not yet been reached. But it didn't last long.

Need to know

1. HDD is a complex thing for storing information

2. The hard drive is short-lived and with constant use is unlikely to live more than three years

3. It is extremely undesirable to carry a hard drive (somewhere), turn it in your hands and generally remove it from the computer case. Winchester is very sensitive to vibration!

4. The internal structure of HDD is very complicated. If you once went to a circle of young radio amateurs, this does not mean at all that you can now repair hard drives. Repairing hard drives requires more than just a soldering iron!

5. Fans of poking around in hardware need to remember that by opening the HDA of a disk, you thereby put an end to both the information and the hard drive itself

6. In terms of storage security, storage media can be arranged in the following order (with increasing risk of data loss): head, paper, hard drive. Do not store important information on the HDD! And if you have to - always make backups!

7. If the information on the hard drive is not available for any reason, do not try to restore it! Most likely, you will only finally destroy it - it is better to contact professionals. Restoring information is not for you!

8. The word "HDD" is abusive and is not used in polite society, it characterizes something (to put it mildly) unreliable, short-lived and disgusting

Hard drives, or, as they are also called, hard drives, are one of the most important components of a computer system. Everyone knows about it. But far from every modern user even in principle guesses how a hard drive functions. The principle of operation, in general, is quite simple for a basic understanding, but there are some nuances, which will be discussed further.

Questions about the purpose and classification of hard drives?

The question of purpose is, of course, rhetorical. Any user, even the most entry-level, will immediately answer that the hard drive (aka hard drive, aka Hard Drive or HDD) will immediately answer that it is used to store information.

In general, it is true. Do not forget that on the hard disk, in addition to the operating system and user files, there are boot sectors created by the OS, thanks to which it starts, as well as some marks by which you can quickly find the necessary information on the disk.

Modern models are quite diverse: conventional HDDs, external hard drives, high-speed SSDs, although they are not usually referred to as hard drives. Further, it is proposed to consider the device and the principle of operation of the hard drive, if not in full, then at least in such a way that it is enough to understand the basic terms and processes.

Please note that there is also a special classification of modern HDDs according to some basic criteria, among which the following can be distinguished:

• method of storing information;
• media type;
• way of organizing access to information.

Why is a hard drive called a hard drive?

Today, many users are thinking about why they call hard drives related to small arms. It would seem that what can be common between these two devices?

The term itself appeared back in 1973, when the world's first HDD appeared on the market, the design of which consisted of two separate compartments in one sealed container. The capacity of each compartment was 30 MB, which is why the engineers gave the disk the code name "30-30", which was fully consonant with the brand of the popular at that time gun "30-30 Winchester". True, in the early 90s in America and Europe this name practically fell into disuse, but it still remains popular in the post-Soviet space.

The device and principle of operation of the hard drive

But we digress. The principle of operation of a hard disk can be briefly described as the processes of reading or writing information. But how does it happen? In order to understand the principle of operation of a magnetic hard drive, it is first necessary to study how it works.

The hard drive itself is a set of platters, the number of which can vary from four to nine, interconnected by a shaft (axis) called a spindle. The plates are placed one above the other. Most often, the material for their manufacture is aluminum, brass, ceramics, glass, etc. The plates themselves have a special magnetic coating in the form of a material called platter, based on gamma ferrite oxide, chromium oxide, barium ferrite, etc. Each such plate is about 2 mm thick.

Radial heads are responsible for writing and reading information (one for each plate), and both surfaces are used in the plates. For which it can range from 3600 to 7200 rpm, and two electric motors are responsible for moving the heads.

At the same time, the basic principle of the computer hard drive is that information is not recorded anywhere, but in strictly defined locations, called sectors, which are located on concentric tracks or tracks. To avoid confusion, uniform rules apply. This means that the principles of operation of hard disk drives, from the point of view of their logical structure, are universal. So, for example, the size of one sector, adopted as a single standard throughout the world, is 512 bytes. In turn, sectors are divided into clusters, which are sequences of adjacent sectors. And the features of the principle of operation of a hard disk in this regard are that the exchange of information is carried out by whole clusters (an integer number of chains of sectors).

But how is information read? The principles of operation of a hard disk drive are as follows: using a special bracket, the reading head moves in a radial (spiral) direction to the desired track and, when rotated, is positioned above a given sector, and all heads can move simultaneously, reading the same information not only from different tracks , but also from different disks (platters). All tracks with the same serial numbers are called cylinders.

At the same time, one more principle of hard disk operation can be distinguished: the closer the read head is to the magnetic surface (but does not touch it), the higher the recording density.

How is information written and read?

Hard drives, or hard drives, were called magnetic because they use the laws of physics of magnetism, formulated by Faraday and Maxwell.

As already mentioned, plates made of non-magnetically sensitive material are coated with a magnetic coating, the thickness of which is only a few micrometers. In the process of work, a magnetic field arises, which has the so-called domain structure.

The magnetic domain is a magnetized region of a ferroalloy strictly limited by boundaries. Further, the principle of operation of a hard disk can be briefly described as follows: when an external magnetic field is applied, the disk's own field begins to orient itself strictly along the magnetic lines, and when the impact stops, zones of residual magnetization appear on the disks, in which the information that was previously contained in the main field is stored. .

The reading head is responsible for creating an external field during recording, and when reading, the residual magnetization zone, being opposite the head, creates an electromotive force or EMF. Further, everything is simple: a change in the EMF corresponds to a unit in a binary code, and its absence or termination corresponds to zero. The time of change of the EMF is usually called a bit element.

In addition, the magnetic surface, purely for computer science reasons, can be associated as a certain dotted sequence of bits of information. But, since the location of such points is absolutely impossible to calculate exactly, you need to install some pre-provided marks on the disk that helped determine the desired location. The creation of such marks is called formatting (roughly speaking, breaking the disk into tracks and sectors combined into clusters).

The logical structure and principle of operation of the hard disk in terms of formatting

As for the logical organization of the HDD, formatting comes first here, in which two main types are distinguished: low-level (physical) and high-level (logical). Without these steps, there is no need to talk about bringing the hard drive into working condition. How to initialize a new hard drive will be discussed separately.

Low-level formatting involves a physical impact on the surface of the HDD, which creates sectors located along the tracks. It is curious that the principle of operation of a hard disk is such that each created sector has its own unique address, which includes the number of the sector itself, the number of the track on which it is located, and the number of the side of the plate. Thus, when organizing direct access, the same RAM accesses directly to a given address, and does not search for the necessary information over the entire surface, due to which speed is achieved (although this is not the most important thing). Please note that when performing low-level formatting, absolutely all information is erased, and in most cases it cannot be restored.

Another thing is logical formatting (in Windows systems, this is quick formatting or Quick format). In addition, these processes are applicable to the creation of logical partitions, which are some area of ​​the main hard drive that works according to the same principles.

Logical formatting primarily affects the system area, which consists of the boot sector and partition tables (Boot record), the file allocation table (FAT, NTFS, etc.) and the root directory (Root Directory).

Information is written to sectors through the cluster in several parts, and one cluster cannot contain two identical objects (files). Actually, the creation of a logical partition, as it were, separates it from the main system partition, as a result of which the information stored on it, when errors and failures occur, is not subject to change or deletion.

HDD Main Features

It seems that in general terms the principle of the hard drive is a little clear. Now let's move on to the main characteristics, which give a complete picture of all the possibilities (or disadvantages) of modern hard drives.

The principle of operation of the hard drive and the main characteristics can be completely different. To understand what we are talking about, let's highlight the most basic parameters that characterize all information storage devices known today:

• capacity (volume);
• speed (data access speed, reading and writing information);
• interface (connection method, controller type).

Capacity is the total amount of information that can be written and stored on a hard drive. The HDD industry is developing so fast that today hard drives with volumes of the order of 2 TB and above have already come into use. And, as it is believed, this is not the limit.

The interface is the most significant feature. It determines exactly how the device is connected to the motherboard, which controller is used, how reading and writing is performed, etc. The main and most common interfaces are IDE, SATA and SCSI.

Drives with an IDE interface are not expensive, but the main drawbacks include a limited number of simultaneously connected devices (maximum four) and a low data transfer rate (even if Ultra DMA direct memory access or Ultra ATA protocols (Mode 2 and Mode 2 and Mode 2) are supported. 4).Although, as it is believed, their use allows you to increase the read / write speed to the level of 16 Mb / s, but in reality the speed is much lower.In addition, to use the UDMA mode, you need to install a special driver, which, in theory, should be supplied in included with the motherboard.

Speaking about what is the principle of operation of a hard drive and characteristics, one cannot ignore and which is the successor to the IDE ATA version. The advantage of this technology is that the read/write speed can be increased up to 100 Mb/s by using the high-speed Fireware IEEE-1394 bus.

Finally, the SCSI interface is the most flexible and fastest compared to the previous two (write/read speed reaches 160 Mb/s and more). But these hard drives are almost twice as expensive. But the number of simultaneously connected storage devices is from seven to fifteen, the connection can be made without de-energizing the computer, and the cable length can be about 15-30 meters. Actually, this type of HDD is mostly used not in user PCs, but on servers.

Performance, which characterizes the transfer rate and I/O throughput, is usually expressed in terms of transfer time and amount of sequential data transferred, and is expressed in Mbps.

Some additional options

Speaking about what is the principle of operation of a hard drive and what parameters affect its operation, one cannot ignore some additional characteristics that may affect the performance or even the life of the device.

Here in the first place is the rotation speed, which directly affects the search and initialization (recognition) time of the desired sector. This is the so-called hidden seek time - the interval during which the desired sector turns to the read head. Today, several standards have been adopted for spindle speed expressed in revolutions per minute with dwell times in milliseconds:

• 3600 - 8,33;
• 4500 - 6,67;
• 5400 - 5,56;
• 7200 - 4,17.

It is easy to see that the higher the speed, the less time is spent on searching for sectors, and in physical terms - on disk rotation until the required platter positioning point is set for the head.

Another parameter is the internal transfer rate. On the outer tracks, it is minimal, but increases with a gradual transition to the inner tracks. Thus, the same defragmentation process, which is moving frequently used data to the fastest areas of the disk, is nothing more than moving it to an internal track with a faster read speed. The external speed has fixed values ​​and directly depends on the interface used.

Finally, one of the important points is related to the fact that the hard disk has its own cache memory or buffer. In fact, the principle of operation of a hard disk in terms of buffer use is somewhat similar to RAM or virtual memory. The larger the amount of cache memory (128-256 KB), the faster the hard drive will work.

Main requirements for HDD

There are not so many basic requirements that in most cases apply to hard drives. The main thing is long service life and reliability.

The main standard for most HDDs is considered to be a service life of about 5-7 years with an operating time of at least five hundred thousand hours, but for high-end hard drives this figure is at least a million hours.

As for reliability, the S.M.A.R.T. self-test function is responsible for this, which monitors the status of individual elements of the hard drive, carrying out continuous monitoring. Based on the collected data, even a certain forecast of the appearance of possible malfunctions in the future can be formed.

It goes without saying that the user should not be left out. So, for example, when working with a HDD, it is extremely important to observe the optimal temperature regime (0 - 50 ± 10 degrees Celsius), avoid shocks, bumps and falls of the hard drive, dust or other small particles getting into it, etc. By the way, many will it is interesting to know that the same particles of tobacco smoke are approximately twice the distance between the reading head and the magnetic surface of the hard drive, and a human hair - 5-10 times.

Initialization issues in the system when replacing a hard drive

Now a few words about what actions should be taken if, for some reason, the user changed the hard drive or installed an additional one.

We will not fully describe this process, but will dwell only on the main stages. First, you need to connect the hard drive and see in the BIOS settings whether new hardware has been detected, in the disk administration section, initialize and create a boot entry, create a simple volume, assign an identifier (letter) to it and format it with a choice of file system. Only after that the new "screw" will be completely ready for work.

Conclusion

That, in fact, is all that briefly concerns the basics of the functioning and characteristics of modern hard drives. The principle of operation of an external hard drive was not considered fundamentally here, since it is practically no different from what is used for stationary HDDs. The only difference is only in the method of connecting an additional drive to a computer or laptop. The most common is the connection via a USB interface, which is directly connected to the motherboard. At the same time, if you want to ensure maximum performance, it is better to use the USB 3.0 standard (the port inside is colored blue), of course, provided that the external HDD itself supports it.

For the rest, it seems that many have at least a little understood how a hard drive of any type functions. Perhaps, too many topics were given above, even from a school physics course, however, without this, it will not be possible to fully understand all the basic principles and methods inherent in the production and application of HDDs.

When discussing computers, such terms as hard disk, hard drive or HDD are often used. These terms refer to one of the main components of a modern computer, which is used to store all of the user's data. In this article, you will learn what a hard drive is, why it is called a hard drive, and how to choose this component correctly.

What does a hard drive look like without a cover.

A hard disk is a data storage device that works on the basis of magnetic recording. In this device, data is recorded on a layer of ferromagnetic material deposited on the surface of an aluminum or glass disc.

A hard disk uses one or more of these disks, which are fixed on a common axis. During the operation of the device, these disks rotate at high speed (5400 revolutions per minute or more), while a magnetic head is located above the disk, which reads and writes information to the disk.

The hard drive is quite a sensitive device. In the event of a large overload, for example due to impact, it can easily fail. This vulnerability is especially relevant when the device is running. This is due to the fact that the hard drive is manufactured to the smallest tolerances. For example, the distance between the magnetic read head and the surface of a disk that rotates during operation is only 10 nanometers.

Now hard drives are being phased out little by little. Unlike hard drives, solid state drives have no moving parts and are therefore much more reliable, they are not so afraid of shocks and overloads. Other than that, SSDs work. This allows you to turn on your computer and run programs faster.

On the other hand, the cost of storing 1 gigabyte of data on an SSD drive is much higher. So, a 1 terabyte hard drive now costs about $50, while a 1 terabyte SSD costs at least $200. Therefore, hard drives are still the primary device for long-term data storage, and desktop and laptop manufacturers continue to build them into their devices.

But, over time, the cost of solid state drives will decrease and at some point they will completely replace hard drives. Today, SSDs are most often used in conjunction with a hard drive. The operating system and programs are written to the SSD drive, and user files are written to the hard drive.

What is a winchester

What does a hard drive look like.

The hard drive has several alternative names. For example, the abbreviation HDD is often used to denote it, which stands for hard disk drive, which can be translated as a hard disk drive. Another possible name is Winchester. This is an unofficial slang name that appeared back in the 70s.

According to one version, the hard drive began to be called a hard drive because of the IBM employees who developed the model 3340 hard drive. When creating this device, engineers used the short designation "30-30". This designation indicated that the hard disk consisted of two modules of 30 megabytes each. At the same time, it coincided with the name of the .30-30 Winchester rifle cartridge for the popular Winchester Model 1894 rifle. Because of this coincidence, the hard drive began to be called a hard drive.

This name took root well and was widely used until the end of the 90s. Later, it began to fall into disuse. Now in the USA and Europe a hard drive is no longer called a hard drive, but in the CIS countries this name is still used.

Hard disk selection

In order not to be mistaken with, it is important to clearly understand what this disk will be used for. First, you need to decide on the type of hard drive. Now there are external and internal hard drives. usually have a protective case and a USB interface that allows you to connect this drive to a computer like a regular USB flash drive. This type of disk is usually used for transferring or backing up data. Internal hard drives are usually equipped with a SATA interface and are designed to be installed inside a computer.

And secondly, you need to choose a form factor. Modern disks are available in two versions: 2.5 and 3.5 inches. 2.5 inch versions are installed in laptops, and 3.5 inch in desktop computers. External hard drives can also be either 2.5 or 3.5 inches. 2.5" external drives are more compact and require no additional power, while 3.5" external drives offer more storage for the same price.

After you have decided on the type and form factor of the hard drive, you can look at the volume and other characteristics. For example, such characteristics as spindle speed and cache size are very important. The higher they are, the faster the drive will work. The manufacturer of hard drives is also important, now the highest quality models are produced by Western Digital and Seagate.

HDD ("winchester", hdd, hard disc drive - eng.) - an information storage device based on magnetic plates and the effect of magnetism.

Applies everywhere in personal computers, laptops, servers and so on.

Hard disk device. How a hard drive works.

In the floor sealed the block contains double-sided plates, with applied on them magnetic layer planted on motor shaft and rotating at a speed of 5400 revolutions per minute. The block is not completely sealed, but most importantly, it does not let through small particles and does not allow humidity fluctuations. All this adversely affects the life and quality of the hard drive.

In modern hard drives, the shaft is used. This gives less noise during operation, significantly increases durability and reduces the chance of jamming the shaft due to collapsed.

Reading and writing is done with head block.

In working order, heads soar above the disk surface at a distance ~10nm. They are aerodynamic and rise above the disk surface due to updraft from the rotating plate. Magnetic heads can be located on both sides plates, if magnetic layers are deposited on each side of the magnetic disk.

The connected head unit has fixed position, that is, the heads move all together.

All heads are controlled by a special drive unit based on electromagnetism.

Neodymium magnet creates a magnetic field, in which the head unit can move with a high reaction speed under the influence of current. This is the best and fastest way to move the block of heads, but once the block of heads was moved mechanically, with the help of gears.

When the disc is turned off, to prevent the heads from sinking onto the disc and damaged him, they clean up in head parking area(parking zone, parking zone).

It also allows you to transport offline hard drives without any special restrictions. In the off state, the disk can withstand heavy loads and not be damaged. In the on state, even a small push at a certain angle can destroy the magnetic layer of the plate or damage the heads when touching the disk.

In addition to the sealed part, modern hard drives have an outer control board. Once upon a time, all control boards were inserted into the computer motherboard in expansion slots. It was not convenient in terms of versatility and capabilities. With hard drives these days, all the drive electronics and interfaces are located on a small circuit board at the bottom of the hard drive. Thanks to this, it is possible to configure each disk for certain parameters that are beneficial in terms of its structure, giving it a speed gain, or quieter operation, for example.

To connect the interface and power, standard common connectors are used / and Molex/Power SATA.

Peculiarities.

Hard drives are the most capacious custodians of information and regarding reliable. The volume of disks is constantly growing, but recently this is due to some complexities and for further expansion of the volume, new technologies are required. We can say that hard drives have practically gone straight in achieving maximum capabilities. The spread of hard drives was mainly facilitated by the ratio pricevolume. In most cases, a gigabyte of disk space costs less than 2.5 rubles.

Pros and cons of hard drives vs.

Before the advent of solid state SSD(solid state drive) - drives, hard drives had no competitors. Now hard drives have a direction to aim for.

Cons of hard drives(hard drive)(ssd) drives:

• low sequential read speed
• low access speed
• slow reading speed
• slightly slower write speed
• vibrations and slight noise during operation

Although on the other hand, hard drives have other more weighty the benefits to which SSD accumulators strive and strive.

pros hard drives (hard drive) compared to solid state (ssd) drives:

• significantly better volume price
• the best indicator of reliability
• higher maximum volume
• in case of failure, many times more chance to recover data
• the best option for use in media centers, due to its compactness and large capacity 2.5 drives

About what worth paying attention when choosing a hard drive, you can see in our article "". If you need hard drive repair or data recovery, you can refer to.

Today we will talk about what HDD drives are, what they are, and consider their characteristics. We will find out which of them are the best, and which HDDs are not worth buying.

A hard drive is an information storage device that is used in computers and laptops to install an operating system, drivers, programs on it, as well as to store all kinds of user files.

Hard drive design

HDD is half mechanical, half electronic device, consisting of magnetic plates, reading heads, spindle (motor), and control board. The spindle, on which the magnetic plates are fixed, spins them up to several thousand revolutions. per minute. It is believed that the higher the torque of the spindle, then the speed of its reading is greater. Although important factors include: random access time and recording density. HDD differ among themselves in speed, volume, and of course reliability. This parameter is guaranteed by the manufacturer.

What are the best manufacturing companies?

Samsung drives are considered the most reliable and fastest. Hitachi also produces very good discs, but they are slower. Western Digital's HDDs are of average quality. It turned out that this company initially began to produce its products at cheap factories that did not have high-quality equipment. The lowest quality of the production of devices of this type from well-known brands is the once leading American electronics company Seagate. Well, Fujitsu and Toshiba now cannot boast of the quality of hard disk production at all.

Therefore, when choosing to purchase an HDD, it is better to choose either Samsung or Hitachi. They differ in their dimensions. HDDs with a disk width of 3.5 (inches) are installed on computers, and 2.5 (inches) on laptops.
The speed of the hard drive of the computer's system unit is more than 7000 rpm, but HDDs with a performance of no more than 5500 rpm come across on sale. Such low-speed copies are not worth buying. But laptop drives with a rotation speed of 5400 rpm. They are much quieter and don't get as hot.

A hard disk buffer is called cache memory, and serves to speed it up. It ranges from 32 to 128 MB. Although 32 MB. will be enough for its normal operation. The read and write speed is one of the most important parameters that greatly affects the working performance of the device.

Information exchange rate

A good indicator for HDD is considered to be a read speed of 110 - 140 MB / s. You should not buy an HDD with a speed not exceeding 100 Mb / s. Random access time is the second most important indicator of hard drive performance, after reading and writing. It is believed that the smaller this parameter, the better the quality of the device. It mainly affects copying and reading small files. Pretty good if the HDD access time is 13 - 14 ms. Carriers of this type come with two types of connectors. These are SATA 2 (earlier) and SATA 3. These connectors are compatible with each other, so this does not affect the operation of drives and their speed in any way. Over the past ten years, hard drives have not changed at all. Therefore, the price for them remained approximately at the same level.

WindowsTune.ru

What is an HDD in a computer?

In various programs that monitor computer performance, you can find such a designation as HDD. On the cases of most computers there is a periodically flashing light with the same signature. What does this abbreviation mean?

HDD

HDD, also known as Hard Disk Drive, is nothing more than a hard drive. The blinking light, by the way, blinks for a reason - you can always determine from it whether the hard drive is working at all, or the system is not accessing it (then it just hangs, but there can be many reasons for this, and so you know more deep symptoms - this is if the light does not light at all). If the light is constantly on, this indicates an excessive load on the computer - you will notice this by its greatly reduced performance. In such a situation, we advise you to simply close some programs - then the number of accesses to the hard disk will decrease, and the performance of running programs will increase.

AskPoint.org

hdd what is it?

HDD, hard drive, hard drive... All these words refer to the same component of a modern personal computer, without which it is impossible to imagine.

Previously, all information on computers, which at that time were called computers, was stored on devices called punch tapes. What is perforated tape? In fact, this is a piece of paper made of cardboard, in which special holes are made. But this is the "stone age" of computers. The next step in the development of personal computers was a technology called magnetic recording. It is this principle that underlies the technology of functioning of modern hard drives. The main difference between hard drives of the past and modern models for ordinary users is the amount of information that can be recorded on one medium. If earlier this volume was measured only in kilobytes, today we are dealing with terabytes. Increasing the amount of stored information is one of the main achievements of today's HDDs.

Why and what is the HDD for?

Why is a hard disk (HDD) needed and how is it used directly by the computer's operating system itself? As a rule, any computer stores this or that information in itself, and the hard disk is the very device on which information is stored. Today, this is a very important function for any computer (storing information on a digital medium), because without a hard drive, we, users of personal computers, would have to have constant access to the Internet or a local network, and computers without such capabilities would lose a significant portion of their functionality.

In more "scientific" terms, a hard drive is the storage component of any PC. The main task of this component is to store information for a long time. The hard drive, unlike the "RAM" of the computer (RAM), is not a memory called volatile. What does it mean? Let's imagine that you worked on a computer with a document, saved it, and then, of course, turned off the computer. If the HDD memory were volatile, then all the information you saved would be irretrievably lost. Why? The thing is that for the normal operation of volatile memory, a constantly on power supply is required. It is on this principle that the RAM of a computer works, but the memory on hard drives does not, since it is not volatile. For the same reason, this type of memory is the best for storing any information, whether it be documents, photos, videos, etc. By the way, the operating system, as a rule, is installed on the hard drive in a section specially designed for this. Of course, all of the above does not mean at all that information has been stored on this type of device for decades, on the contrary, it needs to be “cleaned” periodically, that is, unnecessary and unnecessary information must be deleted.

What do the terms HDD, hard drive and hard drive mean?

What does HDD mean? The answer sounds like this: HDD is a hard disk drive that uses the magnetic principle of operation. The abbreviation from English (hard disk drive) is translated as a hard disk. The word magnetic can also be added to this abbreviation, which means magnetic.

By the way, why is it hard? What is a computer hard drive? Why not soft? There are no secrets here either. The thing is that inside this type of device there are special plates. The plates are solid, in fact, this is the explanation of this name. Is it possible to say a few words about floppy disks that appeared at about the same time as hard drives. So these floppy disks, namely their magnetic disks, were soft. So everything is logical and natural.

As for the word Winchester, everything is somewhat more complicated here. The reason for the appearance of this name - oddly enough, is intertwined with the designation of the real rifle itself. In 1973, the world saw the HDD 3340 model, which had the engineering designation 30-30 (Two 30 MB modules). This designation echoed the name of the 30-30 Winchester cartridges. Everything is simple.

What do these devices look like inside a personal computer?

Now the most popular HDD models are 2.5 or 3.5 inches. The latter are used in conventional PCs, and the 2.5-inch form factor is designed for laptops and portable versions of devices.

The first thing to say is that in the world of computer technology everything is improving, and quite quickly, and the situation with our type of devices is no exception. What does a hard drive look like on a computer today? Now the most popular HDD models are 2.5 or 3.5 inches. The latter are used in conventional PCs, and the 2.5-inch form factor is designed for laptops and portable versions of devices. In older PCs, you can also find disks with other sizes, but they are obsolete and are not usually used in modern computers. What sizes are out of date? By and large - all but the above. Previously, HDDs had a format of 8 and 5.25 inches.

The amount of memory of modern hard drives.

For most users, memory size seems to be a key indicator in choosing the most suitable model for use. Speaking about computers in Russian, one can say bluntly - no one cares about all the technical characteristics (noise, speed) except for one. As you may have guessed, this is exactly the amount of information that can fit on the disk. It doesn't matter that the hard drive can be noisy and slow, the main thing is how much it "fits" on it. This is what the vast majority of users care about. Moreover, many other characteristics in the eyes of the inhabitants do not look so significant, but the amount of free space is the main indicator. Of course, there are users who pay attention to noise, power consumption and other secondary characteristics of any hard drive, but they are in the minority.

In general, when choosing memory for your computer, you should remember one trick of manufacturers. Indicating the amount of memory of the device, they round all the values, so the actual amount of memory will be slightly less than indicated on the packaging. The thing is that manufacturers round off the indicators in such a way that there are 1000 bytes in one kilobyte, not 1024. Hence the “error”. Is it possible to deal with this somehow? By and large, no, but it can be used, and we tell you how to do it in Russian: try to use this fact (rounding in favor of the manufacturer) to your advantage: bargain with the seller, pointing to a smaller amount of real hard disk memory instead of the declared one. How about saving money? Buy yourself a cookie

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