What is the HDD (Hard Disk Drive)?

What is the HDD (Hard Disk Drive)?

Hard Disk, in short, HDD drive is a magnetic recording medium used for data storage. Due to their large size and high prices, hard drives used only in computer centers have entered our daily lives with their shrinking dimensions that can fit into mobile phones and digital cameras.

The most common use of hard drives is computers. Large amounts of information such as audio, video, software, databases are stored on hard disks for use when needed.

Although hard drives are extremely fast in data transfer today, they are slower than RAM because they are electromechanical. They are used as an auxiliary and permanent memory in computers. When a computer software starts operating, the information required for the software to work is read from the hard disk and transferred to the much faster RAM. If the required part is too large to fit in RAM, the computer uses part of the hard disk as RAM.

Computer hard drives are usually fixed inside computers, there are also portable ones that can be externally connected to computers.

Working Principle

structure

Data writing on hard disks; It is made on discs made of metal, glass, or plastic, the surface of which is covered with iron oxide or other magnetic material. In these recording environments, since the data is recorded by magnetization, they remain fixed until they are deleted, and in cases such as power cuts, they do not disappear as in computer memory chips, so they are named as mentioned.

A hard disk contains one or more recording discs, mostly metal. While metal disks or disks spin at speeds such as 3600, 4200, 5400, 5900, 7200, 10000, 15000 rpm (rev/min), the head or heads traveling on the disc surfaces perform read-write operations.

The developing technology has reduced the size of hard drives and increased its ability to store information. The first samples of several megabytes in size have been replaced by those that can store 500-750-1000-1500 GB (gigabytes) of data today, and this is increasing each year.

Nowadays, small hard disks with a compact flash size (42.8 × 36.4 × 5 mm) with less than 20 grams of compact flash size (42.8 × 36.4 × 5 mm) data storage facilities are also produced.

history

The data storage units used before the hard disks were called "magnetic strips" and "magnetic drums". The first commercial example ERA 110 magnetic drum, made in 1950, was able to store 1 megabit (1 bit = 1/8 byte) data and read a word in 5000 seconds. Other important dates on the subject:

1956 - IBM company produced 5 MB of 305 RAMAC, consisting of 50 pieces of 61 cm diameter disks.

1973 - IBM 3340 produces the famous 30 MB hard drive branded by Winchester, in some countries the hard drive is still called this way.

1980 - Seagate manufactures 5 MB ST 506, twice the height of today's 5.25-inch CD drives.

1983 - With the PC / XT computers manufactured by IBM, the hard disk became the basic hardware for many personal computers.

1985 - Hard drives of the size (1.6 inches in height) of 5.25-inch CD drives today are manufactured.

1987 - 3.5 inch hard disks with sizes up to 500 MB were produced.

1997 - IBM launches a 16.8 GB hard drive for desktop computers.

1998 - 25 GB disks released.

1999 - 10,000 rpm 73 GB disk was produced.

IBM product 1 GB Microdrive hard drive

2000 - IBM produced 1 GB Microdrive.

2007 - Hitachi produced 1000 GB (1 TB (Terabyte)) hard drive.

2008 - Western Digital manufactured the 2000 GB (2 TB (Terabyte)) (3.5 ″ 5400 RPM) hard drive and started selling in the first quarter of 2009.

2011 - Seagate manufactured and released 3000 GB (3 TB (Terrabyte)) (3.5 ″) hard drive.