Hard Disk Drives and Solid State Drives

The hard disk drive (HDD) is the brain of your computer. All the word documents you type, media programs installed, games you play, etc. are all saved onto the hard drive of your computer.

The common household HDD’s appear in the form of something like this:

A very simple design, and yet one of the most remarkable products of engineering, modern HDD stores gigabytes and terabytes of memory on disks similar to CD’s. The process of how it stores memory on disks is very complex, but the basic idea is that all data is stored in binary, and a sensor reads the binary code thats encrypted onto the disks as the disks spin up to 7,200 rotations per minute (RPM). The hard drive is connected to the motherboard using Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA) cables. This cable transfers the data from the hard drive to the motherboard, in which the data is processed by rest of the other modules.

This video shows a hard drive in action.

(DO NOT TRY THIS WITH YOUR HARD DRIVE. THE MOMENT YOU OPEN THE CASE OF A HARD DRIVE, IT WILL NO LONGER OPERATE NORMALLY.)

As technology advances, more sophisticated and efficient forms of these HDD’s are made. The latest product is known as Solid State Drives, or SSD’s. As opposed to its predecessor, the solid state drive does not store memory on a spinning magnetic disk. It is stored in semi conductor chips. Therefore the SSD does not contain any moving parts and can allocate memory significantly faster than HDD’s.

Here you can observe the difference between a HDD (above) and a SSD (below).