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The hard drive is a device used to store data on the computer long-term. Unlike RAM, data written to the harddrive (or HDD) is non-volatile and will not typically disappear when turning the computer off.

Harddrives work by using a spinning magnetically reactive platter (or multiple platters), and read and write information using an incredibly tiny, extremely sensitive magnetic needle called a 'head'. This head does not typically come into physical contact with the platter, as doing so will often break the head, causing what is known as a 'crash'. This causes irreversible and permanent damage to the head.

The platters spin at high speeds to deliver data quicker, typically 4200 and 5400 RPM for laptops, and 5400, 7200, and 10,000 RPM in desktops. Servers can also have SCSI 15,000 RPM hard drives.

Hard drives store data most users commonly interact with- Your operating system (example: Windows), music, movies, games, applications and programs, documents, and more.

Hard drives can also be used as temporary RAM in the event of a RAM shortage, however at an incredibly reduced capability.

Most modern harddrives average 80 MB/s read and 60 MB/s write, though may vary from model to model and situation to situation. Modern RAM is much faster. Typical DDR2 and DDR3 memory operates at 8000 MB/s or faster. You can see why the HDD is not preferable as use for memory, and thus why a RAM upgrade is the quickest way to speed up a computer IF it is ram deficient. The use of a hard drive as temporary memory is called 'Swapping' 'Paging' or 'Virtual Memory', and is referred to as 'Swapfile', 'Pagefile' and 'Virtual Memory Allocation'.

Hard drives are a direct descendant of other magnetic storage media such as Floppy Disk Drives, Drum Drives, and Tape Drives. It provides superior storage capacity, better reliability, and speed to Drum Drives and Floppy Disk Drives. Tape Drives can hold higher capacity (as much as 14.5 TB per tape in top models), but since Tape Drives are sequential (must read front to back, like a VHS or Casette, and must be 'rewound') and harddrives are random access (goes directly to the data), tape drives have been replaced by HDDs for performance purposes.

Hard Drives used to be sensitive to magnetic interference, much like floppies and tape drives, but newer drives are shielded from most magnetic interference, unlike floppies and tape drives.

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