These disks are then coated with a thin magnetic layer. In contrast to soft (floppy) disks found inside a floppy disk, the platter in a HDD is rigid, usually made of glass, ceramic or aluminum. The Platter(s) - The hard disk platter is what physically contains the data in a HDD and is where a HDD gets its name. The main components are: the platter(s), the spindle, the actuator, the actuator arm, the read/write head(s). Hard Disk Drives are made up of several physical components. So this raises the question, how do hard disk drives work? Physical Structure Despite HDDs slowly being replaced by SSDs in many consumer and professional settings, they still offer the cheapest price per GB of storage, as a result they are often found where large amounts of storage (several TB) is required, and speed is not paramount. This domination went largely unchallenged until the introduction of commercial flash-based SSDs in the 1990s by SanDisk.

Although the IBM 350 may not look like the hard disk drives (HDDs) we know and still love today, it was the start of the storage media that dominated the computer storage sector. The first hard disk, the IBM 350, was introduced in September, 1956 as part of the RAMAC (Random Access Memory Accounting) system.

Macrium reflect clone 5400 to 7200