How Do Computer Hard Drives Work?
Hard disks have come a long way in the last 50-plus years. Originally, hard disks were quite large, coming in sizes as large as 20 inches across. Despite this whopping size, capacity was pathetic by today’s standards, only holding a handful of megabytes, as opposed to the many gigabytes (thousands of MBs) we’re accustomed to today. In another change, their namesake was once different as well. Originally, hard disks were known as fixed disks, but the name was changed to provide an immediate understood difference between them and floppy disks. Floppy disks use a plastic film to store information that gave the disks their name. Hard disks appropriately have a much sturdier, tougher platter that carries this distinction. Hard disks utilize the magnetic medium to store data. This provides an immediate advantage in that the stored patterns can be remembered for a long time, and the data can be erased or rewritten to the medium just as quickly as it was originally saved. Taking a closer look
