The hard disk is the basic storage device that is used in any computer system. The hard disk drive is the heart of the computer where all the information is stored. There are as usual two types of memories, one is the primary memory and the other is the secondary memory. The hard disk drive is the example of secondary memory device.

The hard disk drives are available these days in many configurations such as apart from speed, the users are also looking for the access speed. That is the how fast the data can be accessed from the hard disk drive. Let us consider the basic structure of the hard disk drive. The structure of any storage media is as much similar to that of the floppy diskette.

But the major difference between the hard disk drive and the floppy disk is that the hard disk has more than just more than two sides. It is also much faster than any floppy disk. The recording media that are used for the floppy disks are the soft and hence they are called as the floppy disk. Where as the hard disk drives uses the hard surface recording media that are called as the platters. These platters are placed one above the other. The platters are where the data or the user information is stored.

There are many platters over the hard disk drive. Physically the platters in the hard disk utilize the two sides also. The number of the platters is dependent over the capacity of the hard disk. The hard disks that were available earlier had considerably low memory as compared to the hard disk drives that are presently available.

Hard disk drives that are available now have the memory ranging from the 40 giga bytes to that in tera bytes. One tera byte is as equal to that of 1000 of giga bytes. Each of the side of the platter of the hard disk drive has a read write head that is used for retrieval or the storage of the data over the hard disk. Each disk surface is coated with some sort of the magnetic material. This magnetic media and the read write head stores the data over it by rearranging the magnetic field. It reads the data from the surface by interpreting the variations in the magnetic field. The platters are mounted on a fixed spindle which rotates at the speed of about 5600 rpm – revolutions per minute (this is the speed of the hard disk that further categorizes it. The read write head moves horizontally across the platters from the edge to the center so that they can read or write data to any part of the surface.

All the heads are assembled with an actuator, the movement of which is controlled by the stepper motor called the head stepper motor.

A stopper is provided for the indication of the track 0 when the head moves towards the outermost track.

A series of the concentric circles on each platter are what known as the tracks. The division of the tracks into the smaller units is called as the sectors. The collection of the tracks that can be accessed without moving the head is called as the cylinder.

The major manufacturers of the hard disk drives are the Western digital, Seagate, Samsung, Quantum etc. The rpm of 5600 is normal. In Seagate if the rpm is 7200, the hard disk is called as the barracuda and if it 10000, then the hard disk is known as the Cheetah drive.

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