Types of Hard Drive Formatting
Hard drives are an integral computing solution component. A computer hard drive stores data permanently for later manipulation and retrieval. Computer hard drives store information through binary encoding such as data files and installed programs.
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Size
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Hard drives come in varying sizes depending upon their intended application. Standard internal hard drives range in capacity from approximately 20 to 2000GB of storage space. It is important to note that hard drive manufacturers measure the capacity of their drives on a bit by bit level. So 1GB is 8 billion bits, as opposed to 1 billion bytes.
Interface Types
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Though largely antiquated, the most familiar hard drive interface type is EIDE. The newer and more generally accepted standard is SATA and SATA II. The latter interfaces provide for a much faster maximum data transfer speed, and provides additional features such as hot-swap ability. Hot-swap ability is a newer drive feature which allows for a hard drive to be removed from a computing system without the need to power the system down. This feature is very useful when data mobility or quick system restoration is an issue.
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Misconceptions
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Though many hard drives advertise specifications including how many levels of gravitational force they can operate under, it is often as misinterpreted as it is misrepresented. The purpose of this specification is to state under what force a hard drive will still operate continually such as if it were in a jet, not how many G. forces of impact shock it can withstand and still be operational.
Warnings
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Hard drives are, in fact, very much like the record players of old. They utilize magnetically covered platters that spin like records, and a reading arm that possesses a reading head on the end that scans over the platter. As such, they are very much susceptible to impact, excessive heat and unnecessarily close magnetic fields. All of these situations may cause data corruption or complete drive failure if left in effect for too long.
Platter Drives Versus SSD Drives
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Until recently, the overall design of a hard drive has not changed since the late 1980s. As explained earlier, hard drives utilize platters that spin under a read/write head to obtain or store information. However, solid-state disks are quickly becoming more affordable and more easily obtained by average home consumers. Solid-state drives utilize flash memory, such as found in a thumb drive, to deliver non-mechanically stored data that does not require defragmentation or have latencies attributed to moving parts. These drives are many times more expensive than the platter counterparts, though they are most definitely an enthusiast's hard drive.
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