the.com/harddrive
A platter spinning 7200 times a minute while a head flies a hair's breadth above it.
means A hard drive is a computer storage device that records data magnetically on spinning rigid disks, holding your files long after the power goes off.
from A compound of plain English bones: "hard" plus "drive." The "hard" distinguishes it from the floppy disk — where floppies stored data on bendable plastic, this device used rigid ("hard") metal platters. "Drive" is the older computing sense of a mechanism that spins and reads a storage medium, the same "drive" in tape drive and disk drive, rooted in the idea of something being driven, made to turn. So the name is simply honest description: the rigid-disk drive, shortened by everyday use into "hard drive."
- head gap
- Floats nanometers above the disk, never touching
- first model
- IBM's 1956 drive weighed over a ton
- crash origin
- Computer crash named for the head hitting platters
- density race
- Modern drives pack terabits per square inch
- sealed inside
- Some are filled with helium to spin smoother
seagate barracuda — most popular hdd line since 1992, billions sold worldwide
western digital blue — wd's consumer standard, 3.5-inch drives dominating retail since 2001
ibm deskstar — infamous 'deathstar' 2005 batch with 100% failure rate within 5 years