Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
Is the proper term
hard disk
or
hard drive
? Either is correct. The original disks
in computers, floppy disks, were removable. A floppy drive was permanently
mounted in the computer, and the floppy disks popped in and out of it. The
drive and the disk were two separate pieces. Then along came hard disks,
which are integrated with their drives. Because there is no separating them,
a hard disk (the platters inside the metal case) and a hard drive (the casing
and read-write heads that support and access the platters) aren't referred to
separately. The entire thing is the
hard disk drive
, and that can be shortened
to
hard disk
or
hard drive
equally appropriately.
A hard disk is typically an internal device, mounted inside the computer's case.
However, external hard disks are also available, connected to the computer by a USB or
FireWire (IEEE 1394) connector. Compared to other storage options, hard disks have a
low cost per megabyte, a relatively fast read/write speed, and high reliability. Their main
drawbacks are that they're fairly large and bulky and not very portable.
Hard disks today have capacities measured in hundreds of gigabytes or even terabytes;
a typical hard disk in a notebook computer might have 500 gigabytes of storage, for
example. The OS itself occupies one or two gigabytes of that, and the rest of the space is
available for applications and data fi les. An older computer might have considerably less
hard disk space than that—perhaps only 10 or 20 gigabytes.
EXERCISE 2.3
Get Hard Disk Information
1.
In Windows 7, click Start
Computer. A list of the drives on your PC appears.
2.
Click the primary hard disk (C:) to select it, and look in the status bar at the bottom
of the window. The hard disk's total size, space used, space free, and fi le system
information appear. Here is an example, but your hard drive will have different
specifi cations.
