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What is a hard drive and what does it do?
A hard drive is a mass storage device found in all PCs (with some exclusions) that is
used to store permanent data such as the operating system, programs
and user files.
The data on hard drives can be erased and/or overwritten. The hard drive is
classed as a non-volatile storage device, which means it doesn't
require a constant power supply in order to retain the information
stored on it (unlike RAM).
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Inside every hard drive are small
round disk-like objects made of either an aluminium/alloy or a
glass/ceramic composite. These are called platters, each platter is
coated with a special magnetic coating enabling them to store data
magnetically.
Hovering above these platters are read/write heads that transfer
data to and from the platters. We will cover platters, heads and the
other mechanical elements in more detail in the
hard drive mechanics section. |
Common hard drive capacities these days range from 40GB
up to and exceeding 120GB.
The higher the RPM, the faster the data can be read from the platters,
which increases overall performance
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