Hard Disk, a closer look…

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Ever wonder what’s inside a hard disk and how things where done in storing data in to it?   A hard disk (hard drive or HDD)  is a storage device inside a PC, notebook Pc, Laptops and many other computing device.  In History, the first hard disk was built by IBM in 1956.  Hard disk in that time was in a  large scale and was designed for a protected environment of a data center or large offices.  Before the early 80’s hard disk has a 8-14 inches platters and requires a large amount of space and was as big as a washing machine. In the early  80’s the first 5.25-inches hard disk  was introduce by Seagate Technology, the ST-506, a 5.25 inches Hard disk drive with a 5MB data storage capacity.  As hard disk technology evolves, its size became smaller and capacity increases from megabytes to gigabytes and now many hard disk manufacturer were able to up-size its capacity into terabytes.

Interior structure of a Hard Disk

As shown in the image above, its my old 60GB Samsung S-ATA HDD.  Labeled  above are some important parts of the hard disk.

Parts Description:

  • Platters – A circular disk mounted in a spindle where magnetic data is stored.
  • Spindle – A spinning axle where the platters is mounted which limits the device to a single I/O  operation and making it the focus of  I/O scheduling decision.
  • Power Connector – Connected directly to the power supply of the computer  giving power to the whole operation of the hard disk.
  • S-ATA Connector – S-ATA (Serial Advance Technology Attachment) computer bus interface connecting host bus adapters to mass storage device. Same as the older ATA standard (A.K.A. EIDE) but more advance in function.
  • Actuator – Responsible for controlling the movements of the sliders and heads.
  • Actuator axis – Where the slider is mounted, it has a bearings for the accurate positioning of the head.
  • Sliders and Heads – Sliders is the one holding the heads, it position the head to where its going to read or write the magnetic data. The hard disk has to kinds of head, the read head and the write head.
  • Ribbon Cable – Connected to the main board of the hard disk, I/O data passes through here. Power connection to the actuator is also connected here.
  • Base Casting – Is where all the parts of the hard disk is mounted.

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