Preview

Hard Drives

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1310 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Hard Drives
Hard Drives

Hard drives have been around longer than you think. In 1956, I. B. M. had invented a disk storage unit that was very large but did not store a lot of data. It was twenty-four inches in diameter and could hold only five megabytes, which is the equivalent to three and one half floppy disks. Originally called “fixed disks” later became known as “hard disks” opposed to floppy disks. In 1973, I. B. M. released a hard drive that could hold seventeen and one half megabytes. In 1980 Seagate made the first five and one quarter inch hard disk. In the late 1980’s, three and one half inch hard disks were invented (PCIN). Although there are smaller hard disks as small as two inches in diameter, three and one half inch hard disks have been made a standard and is used most often today. The capacity in hard drives has excelled thousands of times all over from five megabytes to one hundred sixty gigabytes (160,000 megabytes) which is the equivalent to one hundred eleven thousand one hundred eleven floppy disks. The hard drive or hard disk is one of the most critical components in the operation of a computer. It is also one of the only moving parts in the computer. Sadly, many people do not know the important role it has in the storage of their data or how it even works.

When you think of your hard drive, think of it as the computer’s electronic filing cabinet. Everything you load, download, or save is stored on the hard drive. In fact, ten percent of your hard drive is already used when you purchase your computer because it needs certain system operating files that are required to make the basics work.
Everything you add later such as word processors, antivirus software, e-mail software, games, and internet software are extra, soon leading to an over stuffed filing cabinet (Matthew Ferrara Seminars). However, many people ask, “What is the hard drive, physically?” The hard drive can be commonly referred to as “a box”. That is what it looks like, a three and one

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    NT1210 Lab 1

    • 319 Words
    • 4 Pages

    1. It is important to know how many system words will fit in a primary storage device on a computer so you know how big of a storage unit you have. The more system words that will fit in a primary storage device, the more memory you have on your computer.…

    • 319 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Over the past 30 years the cost of Electronics has steadily decreased. The cost of electronic storage has decreased greatly over the past 30 years as well. In this paper I will be talking about the decrease in the cost of RAM and Hard Drive Storage, how much will a 100TB HDD will cost when it becomes widely available in the future, and how much memory I will be able to buy with $100 in 10 years. In 1956, IBM created the first commercial Hard Drive called the IBM 305 RAMAC which held 5MB and cost a whopping 50 thousand dollars! Electronic storage started being more widespread during the early 1980’s, but it wasn’t until the 1990s that RAM and Hard Drive Storage begin to be cheap enough for the average person. Back in 1981 the price for one MB of Hard Drive storage space was $340! Most people couldn’t afford a computer back in the 1980’s because of the huge cost. Through the 1980’s the cost per MB fell from around $340 during 1981 then to $40 per MB in 1988, and finally to $9 per MB in 1990. The cost of one Bit of ram in 1981 was 0.000425 cents, in 1988 it was 0.000005 cents, in 1995 it was 0.000000158 cents, in 2000 the cost per Bit…

    • 494 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Your OS will use the hard drive as a “back-up” or virtual memory if your PC runs out of RAM while you are working away. Using your hard drive as memory causes a serious performance hit, as hard drives are way, way slower than RAM. So, the trick is having enough memory, adding more does not help if you are doing nothing that needs more memory. Today, with a modern PC and a modern OS, you need about 4GB to achieve this for most standard users. If you do graphic work or work with a lot of applications at once, then more memory than even 4GB may be better. The trick is you want enough main memory (RAM) so the OS doesn't start using the hard drive as memory. Also, to address more than 4GB of RAM, you must have a 64 bit OS installed. If you are only using a 32 bit OS, it will only be able to use about 3.5GB of memory. So installing more is pointless, it…

    • 356 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    A solid-state drive is a drive that uses non-volatile memory as a means of storing and accessing data, similar to computer RAM (SSD, 2014). An advantage the solid-state drive has over other hard drives is no moving parts. This allows the solid-state drive to access information faster, produces no sound, and significantly more reliable than the common hard drive. The first solid-state drive was designed and implemented between the 1970s and 1980s. Throughout the years, the storage capabilities have improved drastically. Sadly, due to the cost per GB of storage, these solid-state drives have not replaced the current hard drive in computers today.…

    • 756 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Comptia a+ Study Guide 220-701

    • 44881 Words
    • 180 Pages

    Domain 1.0: Hardware Domain 1.1: Categorize storage devices and backup media  FDD: Floppy disk drive. Magnetic storage device that uses a read/write head to read, record and erase data onto a floppy disk. Data is stored in binary fashion (0s and 1s). Standard data capacity for floppy disks is 1.44 megabytes (MB), although capacities ranging from 360 kilobytes (KB) to 2.88 MB were available over the lifetime of the technology. Considered obsolete since the PC99 standards, although still available on legacy systems and some specialty machines. HDD: Hard disk drive. Basic unit of permanent storage for computers. Works on same principle as floppy drives, except much larger capacities (< 1 terabyte (TB) currently) and the disks are solid platters. Majority of hard drives use magnetic storage and mechanical spindles and armatures, which make hard drives a vulnerable point for failure. Common interface types for hard drives include SCSI, EIDE and the current standard, SATA. In external versions, USB and IEEE 1394 (known as FireWire on Apple systems) interfaces are also common. o Currently, more computers are being released with solid state drives or devices (SSD), which use non-volatile flash memory to store data, similar to USB flash drives. SSDs are much faster, are less prone to failure since they have no mechanical parts and last longer. However, they are far more expensive, and not presently available in the same capacities as traditional hard drives. Apple uses SSD devices in many of their newer…

    • 44881 Words
    • 180 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    In todays world people may be think that technology will take over the world. Well in some case it may be right and in others its not. It’s just the way you look at it. You may also see how fast technology is growing and how it’s taking over. You may see it as an alien that is taking over the world. Well it may be right.…

    • 1024 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    What is Cloud Storage

    • 2213 Words
    • 9 Pages

    In one of his comedic sketches, George Carlin talked about the whole point of life was to acquire new stuff. With the acquisition of new possessions, a place to store them becomes necessary, thus bigger houses are purchased to provide more space for storage of our possessions or companies are paid for storage spaces. The same can be said about computer information, as data accumulates storage needs increases. To satisfy that need, larger hard disk drives are bought, flash drives, optical disks or solid state drives are other alternatives. However, in 2007 cloud storage and cloud computing became popular as another way to store and process data (Banerjee, 2011).…

    • 2213 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    these cases are designed to hold components which allow for lots of media content to be watched or…

    • 4742 Words
    • 19 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Specs

    • 264 Words
    • 2 Pages

    | The gaming graphics score is based on the primary graphics adapter. If this system has linked or multiple graphics adapters, some software applications may see additional performance benefits.…

    • 264 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The performance of the hard drive affects a computing system significantly. No matter how fast your processor is, the operating system, applications and associated data must all be read into system memory at some point. This loading time significantly reduces a computer's performance. Newer hard drives such as SAS (serial attached SCSI) and SSDs (solid-state drives) posses much faster data transfer speeds and can significantly enhance computing speed and…

    • 312 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Hard Disk

    • 1184 Words
    • 10 Pages

    HARD DISK DRIVES •Performance •Storage capacity •Software support •Reliability Why we call it as……. • Hard disk • Fixed disk • Winchester disk Hard Disk Drive Components • • • • • • • •…

    • 1184 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Computer Organization

    • 855 Words
    • 4 Pages

    The hard disk drive of the computer is where permanent information is stored. Documents, databases, spreadsheets, and programs are all stored on the hard disk. The larger the hard disk, the more you can fit on the drive. The size of the HDD does not affect the speed at which a program can run, but the HDD speed can affect how fast you can access your files.…

    • 855 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    Storage media are the physical hardware on which a computer keeps data, instructions and information. E.g. a CD, a DVD, a floppy disk, hard disk.…

    • 1837 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Hard Disk

    • 1782 Words
    • 8 Pages

    The hard disk is the main storage device in your computer. It is a bit like a filing cabinet: all of your data files and applications software are stored on it.…

    • 1782 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Speed of a Computer

    • 760 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Computers have evolved dramatically over the last 70 years. The size may be one of the main changes. The first computers were the size of a classroom. Today a computer can fit in an adult hand. Another change is the speed in which the computer operates or processes information. The computer user in today’s market wants information as soon as possible. The demand for increased speed is determined by several factors. A few of these factors are Random Access Memory (RAM), clock speed, data on the hard disc, data on a CD ROM, and data on a floppy disc. The role of these factors can determine the speed of a computer.…

    • 760 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays