0
The hard drive is truly a remarkable piece of engineering. It could be compared to a cross between a record player and a tape recorder.
Metal platters, coated with magnetic material, spin at up to 10,000 RPM's beneath magnetic heads. The heads actually "float" over the platter when the drive is running so as not to scrape the magnetic coating off.
The information is arranged on the hard drive in Tracks and Sectors. A track is one concentric circle, where a sector is a "pie slice".
When you save something to the hard drive, the computer looks at a special area of the drive called the FAT (File Allocation Table), and determines what sectors are currently available to save the data. The heads then are moved over the appropriate sectors, and the information is "Recorded" onto the spinning magnetic platter.
When you read something from the hard drive, the computer first looks at the FAT to see where it is saved, and then moves the heads to read the information spinning on the platters below it.
Since the hard drive is spinning so fast, care must be taken not to submit the drive to shocks or bumps. If you've ever played with a gyroscope, and seen how it reacts (kind of "wobbling" when it is bumped), the same thing can happen with a hard drive. However, that wobbling could cause the heads to make contact with the platters and scrape the magnetic coating. That can lead to the loss of data where it has been scraped off, or even worse, a head "crash", where that scraped material gets caught between the head and the platter, causing a LOT of damage and data loss.
* Note: I know that the simple track/sector analogy goes way back to MFM drives and so forth, but for the sake of simplicity, I wasn't going to get into heavy technical details about interleaving, flexible sectors per track, RLL, IDE, etc. etc. Without going into a crazy level of details, this explanation is valid.
What else can I help you with?
How does a computer hard disk drive function to store and retrieve data efficiently?
A computer hard disk drive stores and retrieves data efficiently by using magnetic storage technology. Data is written onto the disk using a magnetic head that creates tiny magnetic fields on the disk's surface. To retrieve data, the head reads the magnetic fields and translates them into digital information. The disk spins rapidly, allowing the head to access different parts of the disk quickly. This process enables the hard drive to store and retrieve data in a fast and efficient manner.
Why does disk defragmentation increase access speed?
Disk defragmentation organizes fragmented files on a disk so that they are stored in contiguous blocks, reducing the time it takes for the drive to locate and retrieve the data. This leads to faster access speeds because the system can read the data more efficiently without having to search multiple locations on the disk.
What is disk encryption software used for?
A disk encryption software is used to encrypt all the data on a disk. Once a disk is encrypted, then unauthorized personnel cannot access the data storage in the disk.
The most important advantage of disk storage over tape storage?
disk storage-> direct data access storage tape storage -> serial data access storage
Advantages of drive formatting?
Access to the data on disk is faster.
What are indexed data bases?
Indexed databases are databases that use an index data structure to efficiently retrieve and access data. The index stores keys and pointers to the actual data, allowing for faster search and retrieval of information. Indexes help in optimizing performance by reducing the number of disk accesses needed to locate specific data.
What are theReasons for a faster hard disk drive?
You can access data faster.
What is The most common and flexible data-acquisition method?
Disk to image file copy
What is The most common and flexible data acquisition method?
Disk to image file copy
Where does Microsoft Access store data?
In files on your disk (like every other program does).
Data is written to and read from a floppy disk via a magnetic?
Yes, data is written to and read from a floppy disk using a magnetic read/write head that interacts with the magnetic coating on the disk. When writing data, the magnetic head aligns the magnetic particles on the disk surface to represent the information. When reading data, the head detects the magnetic orientation of the particles to retrieve the stored information.
CD drive access is unavailable in your system How can you view a CD?
One method of viewing CDs on a system with no CD drive access is to create data images of the CDs. These images can them be mounted from the hard disk using virtual CD-ROM software.
