Data Storage Device: Hard Disk

By Author: Shourya Ray Chaudhuri
Total Articles: 598
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Today, each and every job is conducted on computers, and this is why it is called as the computer generation. They have become the integral part of everyone’s life. One should know that the computer is structured with varied components, so as to function better, and to name the few most important ones are the processor, motherboard, hard disk, RAM, ROM and few other components. However, numerous changes have taken place in a computer from the time of its inception, with regard to size, functionality and speed. Likewise, the hard disk, considered the most important vital organ of a computer, without which a computer would not seem like a computer, has gone through many transformations with respect to many factors.

Initially, hard drives were large in size and could provide space capacity less than 5MB. In the course of time hard disk has undergone lot many changes, which has elevated the demand for it even more. Since, hard disk was huge in size and had external drives earlier; it was placed outside the actual system, but was considered the most integral part of the system due to its attributes. As the time passed, ...
... the size of the hard disk reduced, making it more compact and user friendly, and by adding portability factor to it, it added more value to the entire product called the hard disk.

Bulkier hard disks played the most important role till the mid eighties. During this time, massive revolution in terms of storage took place. This was when USB interface was brought into effect for the first time, which bought along many other factors like portability, compact size and easy plug in concept, which offered variety of choices to the users. This technology allowed other devices to be plugged in to the computer at ease to transfer and store data. Along with this, other innovative storage concepts that were introduced were pen drives and external hard disks, for transferring files and easy backup of valuable files respectively.

External hard drive is one of the types of hard disk drives that is developed for the external storage use only, which vary with respect to size from few megabytes to 64 gigabytes. These set of hard disk drives are connected outside the computer system (desktop & laptop) by USB port i.e. they can be operated after being plugged to the system, whenever and where ever possible. The main functions of this hard disk are data security, mobility, backup, transferring of data at ease and portability. There are two kinds of the external hard drives, namely portable hard drive and desktop and vary with respect to size and weight.

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