Parts of a computer: Hard Drives
PartsOfaComputer-Web - PartsOfaComputer-Topics
The hard drive is a magnetic storage device that is used to hold the long term memory.
It is made of several spinning platters of metal.
There is a read/write head for each platter, the head moves in and out to reach different areas of the drive.
A circuit board on the drive helps move the arm for the read/write heads and coordinate the data coming from and going to the drive.
Hard drives are connected to the computer through wires, internal drives use ribbon cables and external drives use either USB or Firewire cables.
Power gets to the drive either directly from the power supply, from the USB cable (for external drives) or an external power supply.
Drives are measured in gigabytes currently, they used to be measured in Megabytes, and newer drives have Terabyte sized capacity.
You can maintain a drive with virus protection software and defragmentation.
Drives are know to fail, and you should back up the data on them to another drive periodically.
Drives can be designated as Primary (master) and secondar (slave) through jumper pins.
Written assignment:
Write at least 3 paragraphs of at least 6 sentences to demonstrate your understanding of this topic. Use your own words, and do not copy any text from any online sources. You should provide links to web pages that have been helpful in understanding this system. Place the text on your Ning blog and print a copy to hand in. You can include photos in your post. Print this and hand it in with your notes from researching the subject.
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/hard-disk.htm
Some videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQau2dr6BX0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTzAAZPwvBk
Help resources:
http://www.computerhope.com/help/hdd.htm
http://www.fixya.com/search.aspx?cstm=0&_s=hard+drive
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6wTZhsffEE