Mankind has come up with many different ways to store information. One of them is a device - an HDD or "hard disk". Many knowledge of mankind can fit on its plates. However, this was not always the case.
In the distant fifties of the last century, or rather in 1956, IBM created the great-great-great-grandfather of modern information storages. This miracle weighed a little more than a ton (!) And contained only 5 megabytes of data. Such a "box" could only be lifted with a forklift.
As time went on, miniaturization replaced gigantomania. And now small "boxes" weighing a couple of hundred grams and even less are easily placed in your system units, laptops, tablets and even phones, and more recently in watches. It is believed that if aviation developed as rapidly as computers, today everyone could have a private jet for the price of a car. But back to the hardware.
When size matters
Miniaturization has made it possible to create devices that fit in a matchbox and at the same time have a fantastic capacity.
Among all sizes of hard drives, three groups can be conditionally distinguished
- 3.5 inches - the most common option, a resident of almost every desktop PC;
- 2, 5 inches - a fellow in the information part, but for laptops;
- 1–1, 5 inches - usually installed on smartphones, mp3 players and similar devices.
But even in spite of its size, today a 1-inch "baby" is capable of storing hundreds of tracks of your favorite music and dozens of films.
His majesty is the controller
If, opening the system unit, you find not at all those connectors that you expected, there is a reason. Each controller has its own characteristics.
The hard drives differ in the way of connection, as well as the principle of operation for:
- IDE - the most widespread disk controller at one time. It is no longer used so often. It allowed the disk rotation speed to reach 7, 5 thousand revolutions per minute, which gave good performance.
- SATA (I, II, III) - the next generation after IDE. With the best rotation speed, up to 10 thousand rpm.
- SCSI - has always stood somewhat apart, since it was not available to ordinary mortals. It differed in read speed (up to 15 thousand revolutions), so it was used and is still used where special performance is needed.
- SDD is a hard disk controller designed on the principle of flash memory. Contains no moving parts, everything inside is replaced with electronic components. Thanks to this, it offers high MTBF (up to 1 million hours) and reading. However, today they are still expensive. Alternatively, a hybrid version with flash memory and mechanical part.
Outside or inside?
You can point to one more feature of the hard drive - the way it is placed. There are internal and external models.
The internal ones are quietly placed in the system unit, laptop, smartphone, and their work is visible only by the blinking of lights outside.
External hard drives are small boxes with cords. Plugs into a USB port and works great. If you take such a box and disassemble it, then the same usual 2-5 or 3-5 inch HDD or SDD will appear.
And then what?
Progress has one very useful property. He does not stand still. Methods for storing information using lasers, crystals, holographic images are already being developed. Various materials are tried, innovative devices are created. Perhaps, soon the hard drives we are used to will give way to a miracle that has descended to us from the pages of Sci-Fi books.
