How do magnets help the hard drives of computers work?

Answer 1

Imagine a bunch of bar magnets all in a row, with the ends sticking towards you. Imagine that the first one has the north side sticking up, then the next 2 have south sticking up, and then 5 have north sticking up again. If you place a bunch of magnets together like this, you can start creating a code. A code created out of only north and south signals. In fact, computers are based on a very simple code based on only 0s and 1s called binary. North and South can be translated into 0 and 1 very easily. A hard disk turns this line of magnets into a disk. Imagine spinning the long line of magnets like a thread around, like rolling up a piece of paper. To read the hard disk, all you have to do is spin the disk, and place another very small detection magnet close to it. The detection magnet is called a magnetoresistive read sensor. From the pattern of north and south, you can translate the code from "North and South" into everything on a computer. The hard disk is also able to flip the magnets any time, so it can turn a magnet from "north" into "south" very easily. This allows it to not only read the disk, but write to it. Basically, it can change the "code" of north-south any time the computer wants it to. When computers do this, they spin the disk very fast. They can read the code millions of times a second. Much work has been done to help make the disk spin faster and faster.

Answer 2

YES