Hard drives store the bulk of your computer’s data, so they’re an essential component of a desktop PC. They’re available in a wide range of capacities, from 128 GB up to 20 TB or more. While SSDs have come along to increase performance, HDDs are still the most economical way to get large amounts of storage.
Hard disks contain rotating platters that are divided into sections called sectors. Each sector contains a small area of data that can be read by the drive’s actuator arm. The actuator arm reads the magnetism of each tiny portion of the platter to determine whether it’s a ‘1’ or ‘0,’ and the data is then processed by your computer. The platters spin at pre-set speeds (4200 rpm to 7200 rpm for consumer computers). The speed of rotation determines how quickly a hard drive can process data.
As hard disks have moving parts, they are more vulnerable to mechanical failure than solid state drives. A hard disk drive’s spindle, actuator arm and read/write head are all located close together, which means that at any point during a read/write operation, one of those mechanical elements may hit against the other. That can damage the disk and lead to irreparable physical loss of data.
In addition, hard drives require more energy to spin than SSDs, which means they use more electricity in general. Hard disks are also susceptible to logical failure, which occurs when your computer’s software causes the hard drive to stop functioning correctly. Hard drives