hard drive

A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive or fixed disk is a data storage device used for storing and retrieving digital information using one or more rigid rapidly rotating disks (platters) coated with magnetic material. The platters are paired with magnetic heads arranged on a moving actuator arm, which read and write data to the platter surfaces. Data is accessed in a random-access manner, meaning that individual blocks of data can be stored or retrieved in any order and not only sequentially. HDDs are a type of non-volatile memory, retaining stored data even when powered off.
Introduced by IBM in 1956, HDDs became the dominant secondary storage device for general-purpose computers by the early 1960s. Continuously improved, HDDs have maintained this position into the modern era of servers and personal computers. More than 200 companies have produced HDDs historically, though after extensive industry consolidation most current units are manufactured by Seagate, Toshiba, and Western Digital. As of 2016, HDD production (in bytes per year) is growing, although unit shipments and sales revenues are declining. The primary competing technology for secondary storage is flash memory in the form of solid-state drives (SSDs), which have higher data-transfer rates, higher areal storage density, better reliability, and much lower latency and access times. While SSDs have higher cost per bit, SSDs are replacing HDDs where speed, power consumption, small size, and durability are important.
The primary characteristics of an HDD are its capacity and performance. Capacity is specified in unit prefixes corresponding to powers of 1000: a 1-terabyte (TB) drive has a capacity of 1,000 gigabytes (GB; where 1 gigabyte = 1 billion bytes). Typically, some of an HDD's capacity is unavailable to the user because it is used by the file system and the computer operating system, and possibly inbuilt redundancy for error correction and recovery. Performance is specified by the time required to move the heads to a track or cylinder (average access time) plus the time it takes for the desired sector to move under the head (average latency, which is a function of the physical rotational speed in revolutions per minute), and finally the speed at which the data is transmitted (data rate).
The two most common form factors for modern HDDs are 3.5-inch, for desktop computers, and 2.5-inch, primarily for laptops. HDDs are connected to systems by standard interface cables such as PATA (Parallel ATA), SATA (Serial ATA), USB or SAS (Serial attached SCSI) cables.

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  1. The Grandfather

    Hard drive spinning when iMac asleep

    Hi, As the title says I have a 2017 iMac 27" desktop with 1TB Fusion drive - bad choice should have paid for the 256Gb SSD version. In general I am really pleased with it and after years of Microsoft I am slowly seeing the light!! Mind you the learning curve has at time been vertical. However...
  2. L

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  3. GazCBG

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  4. pburke90

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  5. VibraniumSpork

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  6. kenshingintoki

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  7. G

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  8. B

    Question Xbox 360 hard drive transfer problem

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  10. Sab

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  11. terencejames

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  12. john9159

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  13. Sam2060

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  14. R

    Set up external Hard Drive with just a phone

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  15. U

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  16. Sam2060

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  17. H

    Recommendations for an external Hard Drive suitable for a Panasonic 32 Inch TX-32E302B

    Hi all, I've had my 32" TV for about 6 months and I am now considering buying an external Hard Drive, but have no idea what type is suitable? Trying to be clever, I thought I would just stick a 16gb USB into the USB socket to see what would happen. Doh! It wasn't recognised for recording. So...
  18. barryc808

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  19. S

    DAC or Wireless Streamer TV hard drive kinda set up *-)

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