Computer Sales and Support

A Brief History Of Hard Drives

Posted on 11. Dec, 2009 by Matthew Kerridge in Computer, Hardware, guest

Hard drives are found in all computers and laptops. There are also external hard drives you can plug into your current computer to use. Many computers will also contain more than one hard drive. Supercomputers and mainframes will be connected to many different drives. Many video players and camcorders also use a hard disk.

The first hard drives were very large and could not store a lot of information only a few MB. The name hard drive was used due to the hard disk in the hard drive as well as the name needed to differentiate it from floppy disks. The hard drive contains a hard platter. This platter contains magnetic information and the same process to get information onto the platter is the same as using a recording cassette.

These hard platters are magnetic and store your data. The same technology is used to save information on a hard disk that is used when recording on a cassette tape.

The life of the hard drive is very long because the drive heads never actually touch the disk they fly over the disk reading information.

There are several different ways in which you can measure your hard disks performance, by the data rate, which is the number of bytes that can be delivered to the CPU in a second or by the seek time. The seek time is the amount of time it takes your drive to find the requested information and then send it to the CPU. The size of the disk is the amount of data that the disk can store.

Hard drive performance is measured two different ways; seek time and the data rate. The data rate refers to the quantity of bytes that can be sent to the CPU in a second. The seek time refers to how long it takes your computer to find the information you requested and then deliver it to the CPU. Many times these parameters will be affected by your memory and drive size.

The hard drive will be located in a sealed aluminum box. This seal is protected by a warranty and if you should break then your warranty is null and void. A sealed container is important to protect the hard disk as any dust or particles in the air can damage the disk so that it is unusable. When hard drives are made they are constructed in clean rooms that have proper ventilation and no particles in the air.

Matthew Kerridge is an expert in electronic consumables. If you want further information about types of hard drives or are looking for a trusted computer retailer please visit http://www.ebuyer.com

For more details about hard drives see buy a  computer hard drive and hard drive speed

Tags: Computer, Computers, electronics, hard drive, hard drives