What is a hard drive used for in computers?

What is a hard drive used for in computers?

Storage, storage and more storage! This is the only purpose of your hard drive.
Your operating system and all of your software, music, movies, games and files are stored on your hard drive. Your hard drive can contain a phenomenal amount of information, to put the storage capacity into perspective a modern hard drive can contain the entire contents of your local library and have room left over for more!
But what is even more amazing is that we can run out of space!
In this digital age we rely heavily on our hard drives, games to home movies and every conceivable piece of software are stored within the device.
The amount of information contained on your hard drive is limited by its storage capacity. This is measured in gigabytes or terabytes.
The hard drive contained inside your computer can be replaced with a larger one if you are running low on space. Doing this will result in all your information and software having to be reloaded onto your new hard drive, that is assuming you have all the original disks for every piece of software and have all your personal files stored somewhere off your computer.
In reality this is not the best way to increase your storage space because most of us don't have all the original software disks and do not back up all our personal files.
A better way to increase your storage capacity is to purchase a second hard drive, this can be a second internal hard drive contained within your home computer or a stand alone storage device known as an external hard drive.

External hard drives

External hard drives are a convenient option for increasing the storage capacity on your computer system. They are easy to use as they simply plug into a USB port, and most operating systems will recognize the new hard drive and install the driver software automatically. All you need to do then is drag and drop the files you want stored onto your new external hard drive.
External hard drives are a great way to keep your files safe from a computer failure. They are also useful for storing your music, movies, pictures, games and files as this will save valuable space on your internal hard drive leaving it free for the essential smooth running of your computer.

What is a hard drive and how does it work?

How does a hard drive work?
Have a look at the diagram below, does that look like something you have seen before? A record player perhaps!

Funny how technology gets recycled, good practical ideas will always be good practical ideas! But to be honest, although they look similar in the basic design and concept, the technology involved is very much 21st century.
The platter is the magnetically coated disk that contains all the information encoded on your computer. This is spun by its own motor at speeds between 5,400 - 10,000 revolutions a minute.
The head moves along the platter on a cushion of air which is created by the fast spinning platter never touching the sensitive magnetic coated mirror finish. The actuator arm propels the head across the surface of the platter reading and writing information from different sectors up to 50 times a second.
Information can be stored, deleted and written over, making your hard drive phenomenally versatile.

When you store information on your hard drive the computer allocates tracks and sectors to store that information in. Tracks are concentric circles like the red section of the diagram and the sectors are portions of those tracks as the yellow section shows.

The history of hard drives

Its 1956 and you have decided to buy a brand new hard drive from IBM!Do you have the manpower to move it?
Have you got a spare $150,000?
Prepared to pay a little air freight?

Welcome to your brand new IBM 305 RAMAC Hard disk drive with a stunning 5 megabytes storage capacity.The IBM 305 RAMAC is our smallest hard drive measuring only 16 square feet and weighing in just under a ton.Shipping available worldwide via airfreight, at buyers expense!
Thats enough mocking of old technology from me! This was the first commercial hard drive available and sold approximately one thousand units before the next model was released in 1962.

The 5 megabytes was considered an enormous amount of storage at the time. Today the average hard drive in a new home computer would contain a 500 gigabyte hard drive and cost around $100, that is one hundred thousand times more storage than the IBM 305 RAMAC hard disk drive of 1956 and over a thousand times cheaper!

By the 1980s smaller hard drives were being created with a storage capacity in the low gigabytes but with a hefty price tag of up to $800,000. I think most people were able to stay away from an impulse buy!
The 80s and 90s saw the beginning of the home computing era and an increased need for affordable storage. Hard drive technology advanced a huge rate through these years. At first in the early 1980s, home computers were being released with 10mb hard drives but by the late 1990s a home computer could have as much internal hard drive storage as 500mb.

One thing we can be sure of is that computer users will always demand more storage, and hard drives storage capacity will keep getting bigger and bigger to meet our ever increasing digital storage demands.

What is a hard drive? A permanent internal storage device for your computer