Hard disk data recovery software What is hard drive?

What is a hard drive?

Hard drive is the main storage device stores encode digital data on computer. It’s abbreviated as HDD or HD. The hard drive is inside of your computer’s case. It consists of four key components: the platter, the spindle, the read-write arm and the actuator. There is a circuit board on the back of hard drive, which is called disk controller that allows the CPU to communicate with the hard drive. It also provides an interface between the hard drive and the bus connecting it to the rest of the system.

There are two connecting interfaces on the hard drive. A data cable connect the hard drive to motherboard, and a power cable connect the hard drive with power supply.

The hard drive store the operating system files, programs and all your personal files.

How to read and write data on the hard drive?

When Windows need to read or write data on the hard drive, it examine the FAT first to locate the files location or the available location. Once it determined the location, the disk controller instructs the actuator to move the read-write arm and align the head. Then the head move to find the location to store or access data.

The components of hard drive

1. Platter

The platters is the physical part of hard drive which is used to store the recorded data. Hard drives today may have more than one platter. They are usually flat circular disks which are made of metal, glass, ceramic. The upper and lower side of hard disk are magnetic surface Each side of hard disk has a read-write head Sector is the basic unit to store data. The data which written to the hard drive are stored on tracks, sectors, cylinders on the platters.

2. Spindle

Just as its name implies, the spindle is the part used to hold the platter in place and spin the platters to read and write data.

3. The read-write arm

The read-write magnetic head is used to transfer the platters’ magnetic field into electrical current when read and write data. The head’s movement is controlled by the read-write arm so that it moved to the correct location to access or write data. So the read-write arm is also called head arm.

4. Actuator

The actuator arm connect the head with actuator motor which used to drive head to the right place. The actuator motor follow the orders from hard drive’s circuit board and then to control the movement of the arm and the transfer of data on platter.

HDD and SSD

Hard disk drive(HDD) are gradually replaced by Solid state drives(SSD) for its faster access speed and good performance.  

What are the difference between HDD and SSD?

What are the difference between solid-state hard drive and regular hard drive　

SSD file recovery free download data recovery software　

How to recover files from hard drive?

Data recovery software solutions:

No matter what kind of data loss you have, use a data recovery software is the easiest and effective way. You should learn more about the causes for hard drive data loss and back up your data regularly to prevent data loss as far as possible.