Hard Disk Drives

The simple answer is that a computer needs a hard-drive to store the operating system and data, and a motherboard to hold the many components, circuits , etc. So take away any part and the computer won't work!

IDE stands for Integrated Drive Electronics - It's a type of interface to connect IDE hard drives to the motherboard. IDE connections use the wide gray 40/80pin cables.

IDE connections are being replaced by the faster SATA (Serial Advanced Technology Attachment) which has a smaller 7pin cable and can hot swapped as well.

Deleted files can be retrieved using data recovery software until they are overwritten, To ensure that they are permanently destroyed, you may full-format your disk or use a file shredding utility. Both will overwrite them with zeros or some "garbage" data.

You can go into My Computer, and click on the hard disk you want to move files from. Open it up and locate your files. Then, go to EDIT > COPY and then click into the other hard disk you want to move the files TO, and once you find the proper file folder, click on it. then click EDIT > PASTE. That's it!

But what if some of the files say access was denied and it stops? How do you know all of the rest of the files have been copied?

What you could do in that case is to pull up a command prompt (type CMD in the Run or Search box at the Start menu and hit enter) and use XCOPY with the appropriate parameters to recurse through folders, copy hidden and system files, assume Yes on prompts, and to continue on errors. For instance:

xcopy C:\ D:\ /S /H /-Y /C

However, even this likely won't result in a bootable drive with the operating system still usable when using XP or higher. For that, you would likely need drive cloning software. Norton Ghost can do this, but you can use Casper for free to only transfer the bootable partition (and use the other methods to copy data partitions).

You can. The Seagate hard drives connect from USB. There is a FreeAgent Go now using Mac interface. I believe it is 320 GB. The price is probably around $100.

If your computer crashes, you could lose data if it is stored only on the hard disk. Files may also be needed on separate storage if you add a new operating system, if you format the hard drive. Ideally, the backup should be readable or usable on a similar computer, other than the one it was created on.

if you just save something like a word document and you just click save it wont save the word document in the location you want to save it to where as if you click save as you choose a specific location to save a document.

An optical disc drive reads a disc by shining a laser on it and detecting the reflected beam. The reflectivity of a disc varies across its surface, which determines the intensity of the reflected beam. Photodiodes detect this reflected beam and produce electrical signals, which are interpreted as data.

it uses a magnetic North/South binary, where a north magnetic pull is a 1, and a south is a 0

If you've ever tried to open or save a document to/from a floppy disk, you'll know that floppy disks were slow. Imagine if that was your hard disk. Your hard disk contains your applications, user data, operating system - everything that is meant to be retained when the PC is switched off. The faster the hard disk, the faster data can be loaded and saved. Therefore, if you get a HD with a larger cache or RPM speed (10,000 over 7,200), game data will load off disk faster, applications will be able to read system data faster, and your PC will go somewhat more speedily. A faster hard disk isn't a replacement for a spacious amount of RAM, however.

That's perfectly ideal!

no you cant. the drive bays in a tower are to big.

There a multiple ways to back up stuff, I'm assuming you mean the information on the laptop so I'll give you some examples.

Transfer the information onto a memory stick, CDs, Floppy discs (if you still use those things), transfer the data onto a portable hard drive, transfer the data onto your PC, put all the information onto your own securely locked website so that only you can access it, or get someone else to do it for you.

1. The storage capacity of a single disk ranges from 10MB to 10GB. A typical commercial database may require hundreds of disks.
2. Figure 10.2 shows a moving-head disk mechanism.
   • Each disk platter has a flat circular shape. Its two surfaces are covered with a magnetic material and information is recorded on the surfaces. The platter of hard disks are made from rigid metal or glass, while floppy disks are made from flexible material.
   • The disk surface is logically divided into tracks, which are subdivided into sectors. A sector (varying from 32 bytes to 4096 bytes, usually 512 bytes) is the smallest unit of information that can be read from or written to disk. There are 4-32 sectors per track and 20-1500 tracks per disk surface.
   • The arm can be positioned over any one of the tracks.
   • The platter is spun at high speed.
   • To read information, the arm is positioned over the correct track.
   • When the data to be accessed passes under the head, the read or write operation is performed.
3. A disk typically contains multiple platters (see Figure 10.2). The read-write heads of all the tracks are mounted on a single assembly called a disk arm, and move together.
   • Multiple disk arms are moved as a unit by the actuator.
   • Each arm has two heads, to read disks above and below it.
   • The set of tracks over which the heads are located forms a cylinder.
   • This cylinder holds that data that is accessible within the disk latency time.
   • It is clearly sensible to store related data in the same or adjacent cylinders.
4. Disk platters range from 1.8" to 14" in diameter, and 5"1/4 and 3"1/2 disks dominate due to the lower cost and faster seek time than do larger disks, yet they provide high storage capacity.
5. A disk controller interfaces between the computer system and the actual hardware of the disk drive. It accepts commands to r/w a sector, and initiate actions. Disk controllers also attach checksums to each sector to check read error.
6. Remapping of bad sectors: If a controller detects that a sector is damaged when the disk is initially formatted, or when an attempt is made to write the sector, it can logically map the sector to a different physical location.
7. SCSI (Small Computer System Interconnect) is commonly used to connect disks to PCs and workstations. Mainframe and server systems usually have a faster and more expensive bus to connect to the disks.
8. Head crash: why cause the entire disk failing (?).
9. A fixed dead disk has a separate head for each track -- very many heads, very expensive. Multiple disk arms: allow more than one track to be accessed at a time. Both were used in high performance mainframe systems but are relatively rare today.

Yes they do,just like all the other things that will be put inside your recovery disk.

The C drive in Windows Operating System is the partition on which the OS is installed. It also contains installation files for other programs.

The data transfer speed of a device is not fully dependant on its size. With certain file systems, larger drives will perform slower because of the way the files are stored; this is why NTFS is used rather than FAT32 for large hard drives. However; the size of the drive is not the biggest factor in speed. For example, a 7200 RPM drive is usually faster than a 5400 RPM drive, even if the 7200 RPM drive is much larger in storage size.

backing up information or data is where work is saved on your computer and on a memory stick so that if for any reason you lose your computer one day then you will still be able to get to that piece of paper

most things you save on your computer. Some things are stored in memchips on the motherboard, when making BIOS changes for example.

You can also save to a 3.5 " floppy which has 1.44 MB of storage on it, or to a usb flash drive ( 512 MB - 128 GB), or a CD or a DVD. There are also new solid state "drives" which have no magnetic media and no seek or read/write head.

Still the average user save 95% or more of their daily data on a hard drive.

1 TB means 1 terabyte. That is equal to 1000 GB or to 1024 GB, depending on the precise definition used. Normally 1000 GB, in the case of hard disks.

"External" means you can plug it in externally to the computer - nowadays that might be via a USB cable.

The advantages are: * low purchase cost. * can handle multipart forms. * cheap to operate, just new ribbons. * rugged and low repair cost. The disadvantages are: * noisy. * low resolution. You can see the dots making up each character. * Not all can do colour. * Colour looks faded and streaky.