Ever Wondered What Your Hard Drive is Doing?
This video will answer that precise question for you. I have seen a couple of videos like this on YouTube and other places. But they have been without a commentary or any explanation. This video however explains what the hard drive is doing as they run it through a test sequence of progressively larger disk seeks. As Konrad said in his email; it gets to the point without the overload of too much specific information. Sometimes that is exactly what you want.
Now for most geeks they would know how a hard drive looks and works, but I think it is a great video. For people who have never seen the internal workings of a hard drive in action it is a top explanation and demonstration of what is happening.
The speed is amazing and I am always awed by just how fast a hard drive servo arm can move and not explode. It just doesn’t seem possible.
Many thanks to Konrad for sending the link in. If you find a video you think we would like feel free to point us in the right direction! Only because we can’t look everywhere at once.
How A Computer Hard Drive Works - Watch more free videos
Dave
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May 27th, 2007 at 7:27 am
I remember reading an article in Maximum PC magazine which explained the hard drive in detail. I read that every curve, angle and hole on the hard drive is their for a purpose. Hard drives are a delicate pieces of hardware with stringent qualifications. It really is amazing though that the read/write head can move so fast without the head actually scratching the platter as it’s only microns above the surface.
May 27th, 2007 at 12:05 pm
The other thing that I thought of was the fact that if you leave your drive fragmented and don’t ever defrag it - just how much more stress and wear and tear that you are adding to the drive. Then again I guess that is what they are built to do.
Also think about the fact that this is on a stable, solid surface. What about an iPod that uses a micro drive. You have a hard drive that has to withstand movement and jolting while doing the above tricks! Wow.