Understanding mechanical hard drives
Mechanical drives, also known as hard disks, magnetic disks, rotating disks, or spinning disks, are the only mechanical component in a modern computer system. We’ve often addressed them, or, as some might say, degraded them, in this book by calling them slower or legacy drives. The truth is that even though the use of mechanical drives has declined in recent years, they are still commonly seen in today’s enterprise environments, in a slightly different role. Since there are better storage options available for performance-sensitive applications, hard drives are mostly used for cold data storage. Because of higher capacities and lower costs, mechanical drives are still an integral part of any environment.
Let’s briefly describe the major components of a mechanical drive:
- Platter: A hard disk consists of multiple thin circular disks, known as platters. All data on a hard drive is recorded on these platters. To maximize...
