Nearly every desktop computer and server in use today contains one or more hard-disk drives. Every mainframe and supercomputer is normally connected to hundreds of them, while even VCR-type devices and camcorders use hard disks instead of tape. So, what is a hard drive, and how does it op...
Nearly every desktop computer and server in use today contains one or more hard-disk drives. Every mainframe and supercomputer is normally connected to hundreds of them, while even VCR-type devices and camcorders use hard disks instead of tape. So, what is a hard drive, and how does it op...
Each sector is uniquely assigned a disk address before a disk drive can access a piece of data. In order to make the disk usable, first it must be formatted to create tracks and sectors. The track sectors are grouped into a collection known as cluster. It refers to the basic allocation ...
What is a Hard Disk Drive (HDD), and what does it do? Find out what an HDD is and learn about how it works with Crucial's extensive guide to hard drives.
Bad sector failurecan occur when the magnetic media on a hard disk's rotating platter is misaligned, resulting in a specific area on the platter becoming inaccessible. Bad sectors are common and often limited when they occur. Over time, the number of bad sectors can increase, eventually leading...
What is a boot sector? A boot sector is a small section on a storage device, such as a hard drive (HD) or solid state drive (SSD), that contains the necessary code to initiate the boot process. In traditional basic input/output systems (BIOS) systems, the boot sector is in the mast...
An HDD uses stacks of electromechanical spinning platters to store nonsequential data, written to sectors within specified blocks on each disk via an actuator arm. The HDD controller positions a hard disk, so data is read and written on the correct disk sector. The HDD mechanism and hard disk...
A division of a storage medium on a hard drive or diskette that's a wedge shaped section of one of the circular tracks. Each arc is a sector that usually holds 512 bytes of data, and is given a sector number for interleaving purposes. The term "sector" usually refers to the entire ...
Here is a hard drive that has its heads resting on a landing zone consisting of head ramps located just outside the platters- A closer view- And here is an older drive with its heads resting on a landing zone located on the inner side of the platters- ...
·Data errors.Each sector on a hard disk contains 512 bytes of user data, or 4096 bits. These bits are subject to errors from many different causes. Some of the errors are identifiable by firmware or OS; others are undetectable until the hard drive fails. Error correcting codes (ECC) are...