Hard Drives

A hard drive or hard disk drive as is its technical name is a non-volatile storage system that stores data, digitally encoded on quickly rotating saucers with high frequency magnetic surfaces. Hard drives were first introduced in 1956 for data storage to be used by the IBM accounting computer. They were originally created and developed for the use for general computer functions. Later in the 1990’s, a need arose for large scale and reliable storage that was independent of a particular device. This led to the eventual introduction of the embedded systems including RAIDs; Network attacked storage systems as well as storage area network systems that would provide efficient and reliable access to larger volumes of data.

Later on, closely following the 21st century, Hard disk drive usage expanded into consumer application software including the use of Hard disk drives in camcorders, digital audio players, cell phones, digital assistant’s digital video recorders, and even video game consoles. Hard disk drives record intricate data by magnetizing ferromagnetic, or solid metal combinations, directionally in order to represent either a 0 or a 1 in the binary code, a code used in technological settings where a combination of 0’s and 1’s can represent any script. Hard disk drives read this data back by detecting the magnetization of that material. The common hard disk drive consists of a short spindle which holds several circular disks known as platters. On these platters is where the data is recorded to be processed. They are usually made of a glass or aluminum alloy.