Summary
The hard disk drive is the main and generally biggest piece of hardware in a computer that stores data. The hard disk drive is where the operating system, other programs, and most other things are kept.
You may hear people call the hard drive the “C drive” because Microsoft Windows automatically assigns the “C” drive letter to the main section on the computer’s main hard drive.
This isn’t the right word to use, but a lot of people still do. Some computers, for instance, have more than one drive letter, like C, D, and E, which stand for different parts of one or more hard drives. There are other names for the hard disk drive, such as hard drive, hard disk, magnetic hard drive, mechanical hard drive, fixed drive, and fixed disk drive. However, HDD is the official name for the drive.
The root folder of the operating system is usually on the main hard drive, no matter what it’s called.
Hard Disk Drive Physical Description
A hard drive is about the size of a book, but it weighs a lot more.
There are screw holes on the sides of the hard drive that make it easy to place in a 3.5-inch drive bay. With an adapter, you can also mount it in a 2.5-inch drive bay or a 5.25-inch drive bay. When you place a hard drive, the part with the ports faces inside the computer. A 2.5-inch hard drive or SSD is common in laptops.
On the back of the hard drive, there is a port for a wire that goes to the computer. The type of drive determines whether a SATA or PATA connection is used. Most hard drives come with these cables. In addition, there is a plug here for power from the wall.
Most hard drives have jumper settings on the back that tell the computer how to figure out which drive is present when there are more than one. These settings are different for each drive, so get more information from the company that made your hard drive.
A hard drive activity light on some computers lets you know when the HDD is being used.
How a Hard Drive Works
A hard drive does not lose its info when it is turned off, unlike RAM, which does. This is why you can turn off and on your computer again, which turns off the HDD, but you can still view all the data when you turn it back on.
In a regular hard drive, sectors are stored on platters that spin inside tracks. A magnetic head on each plate moves with the help of an actuator arm so that data can be read from and written to the drive.
Kinds of Hard Drives
There are more than two ways to connect a hard drive to a computer. SATA and PATA are just two of them. Also, hard drives come in a lot of different forms, from very small to quite big.
The usual flash drive has a hard drive as well, but it doesn’t spin like a normal hard drive. Solid-state drives are another name for flash drives. They connect to a computer through USB. Sometimes they are called SSHDs.
How to Tell if Your Hard Drive Is an SSD or HDD
The external hard drive is another type of USB hard drive. It’s a normal hard drive in its own case, so it’s safe to leave it outside of the computer case. Most of the time, they connect to computers via USB, but some use FireWire or eSATA instead.
An external casing is a case that holds a hard drive inside. If you want to make your own external hard drive, you can use one to turn an internal hard drive into an external one. They also use things like FireWire, USB, and more.
Storage Capacity
Large hard disk drive sizes are a big reason why people buy or don’t buy certain electronics, like laptops and phones. A small storage capacity means that it will fill up with files more quickly. A large storage capacity drive, on the other hand, can hold a lot more data.
It’s really up to you and your needs to decide which hard drive to buy based on how much space it can hold. Pick the 256 GB tablet over the 128 GB tablet if you need a tablet that can hold a lot of movies, or the 64 GB tablet over the 8 GB tablet, etc.
In the same way, hard drives work the same way. What kind of things do you keep on your hard drive? Do you store a lot of HD movies or pictures? If you want to store things offline at home, you might choose to buy an internal or external hard drive that can hold 4 TB instead of a 500 GB one.
Common Hard Disk Drive Tasks
Changing the partition name on a hard drive is an easy thing you can do to help you remember which is which, or for any other reason. For example, the HDD’s main section is usually called “C” and can’t be changed. But the letter on an external hard drive can be changed from “P” to “L” (or any other letter that works).
Another simple thing you can do with a hard drive is see how much free room it has left. This is very important if you’re getting messages about low disk space, but it’s also necessary to keep the system running smoothly. A lot of things on your PC take up too much space. To fix this, you can get rid of apps you don’t need or that are too big, delete files, or copy them to another location if you’re running out of hard drive space.
Before you can store files or run an operating system, you need to organize the drive or divide it into parts. Most of the time, a new hard drive is cleaned and given a file system when it is first installed with Windows or any other OS. If not, a disk split tool is a popular way to change the drive in this way.
People who have a hard drive that is broken can use free defrag tools to get rid of the fragmentation. Clearing out the junk on your hard drive can sometimes make your computer run faster.
NOTE: An SSD doesn’t need to be defragmented, and you shouldn’t do it either.
When you want to safely delete data from a hard drive, like when you’re selling the hardware or running a new operating system, you can’t get to the data on the drive. A record deletion tool can usually help you do this.
On the other hand, a disk encryption tool can help you keep your hard drive info safe. The data will not be decrypted and useful until a certain password is entered.
Hard Disk Drive Troubleshooting
The hard drive is used over and over by your computer every time you read or write data to the disk. It’s normal for the gadget to break down at some point.
For any kind of hard drive problem, running a hard drive test is the best first step. One of the most common problems is a hard drive that is making noise.
Windows comes with a tool called chkdsk that can help you find and maybe even fix different hard drive problems. The Windows version that has the graphics form of this tool can be used.
There are many free apps that can check a hard drive for problems that could mean you need to replace it. Some of them, like the seek time, can also measure how well something works. You can get to the data on an old hard drive and get your important files back if you need to.
Buying a New Hard Drive
Seagate, Western Digital, Hitachi, and Toshiba are some of the most well-known companies that make hard drives.
Most of the time, you can find these and other names in shops and online, such as on the company’s website or at Amazon.
Check out our new lists of the best hard drives of all kinds if you don’t know where to begin.
- Hard Drives with SATA
- Outside hard drives
- Flash drives that use USB
An SSD and a hard disk drive are two different types of drives
A solid state drive (SSD) doesn’t use a plate that spins to read and write data like a hard disk drive does. SSDs work like flash drives, which don’t have any working parts either. Now a days, solid state drives are very popular because they are faster and more reliable than hard disk drives.
What does a dynamic disk hard drive do?
Traditional hard drives don’t handle data the same way that dynamic disk drives do. A regular drive might set aside some room for the operating system. Dynamic drives, on the other hand, are more flexible and can hold many types of data at once.
