Hard Drives
By: Connor Taylor & Evan Hamby
What are they?
A hard drive is a component on the
computer that functions as a mass-
storage device.
Acts as a secondary storage
(permanent)
Complete opposite of RAM. (Does not
erase after system shut-down and does
not operate at high speeds)
Size
Come in a variety of sizes, depending on
a number of factors.
Physically, on the outside it is nearly
impossible to tell from the shell (if no
labels are visible).
Laptops usually have less hard drive
space than a PC would.
Popular sizes include 150 gig up to 1 TB
on single drives.
Data Sizes
8bit = 1byte
1024 B = 1KB
1024 KB = 1MB
1024 MB = 1GB or gig
1024 gig = 1TB
1024 TB = 1 Petabyte
1024 PB = 1 Exabyte
1024 EB = 1 Zettabyte
1024 ZB = 1 Yottabyte
Replacing Hard Drives
Desktops - Usually, hard drives are held
in a “cage” at the front of the system unit.
Laptops have entirely different places for
their hard drives, depending on make
and model.
Formatting
Current drives are formatted by using an
operating system CD. Earlier operating
systems needed special boot disk, then you
had to load the CD drivers.
Filing systems are NTFS, and FAT.
A formatted drive clears all the memory on the
drive and sets sectors and tracks for where
data will be saved.
Manufacturers
IBM
Maxtor
Seagate
Western Digital
Conner Peripherals
Connection
Parallel ATA
Serial ATA
eSATA
USB Type A and Micro
IDE
SCSI
IDE
Early version of ATA
Made 1986 by Western Digital
ATA
Parallel
Serial
Works faster and more reliably than PATA.
Released in 2003.
eSATA
Used for external drives.
External SATA
SCSI
Standardized in 1986 by Shugart
Associates.
Used commonly today in servers.
USB
Invented January 1996.
Used for external drives
On the back of your study guide, answer this
question:
How many bits are in one terabyte?
Be sure to show ALL of your work…
Sizes of data
8bit = 1byte
1024 B = 1KB
1024 KB = 1MB
1024 MB = 1GB or gig
1024 gig = 1TB
1024 TB = 1 Petabyte
1024 PB = 1 Exabyte
1024 EB = 1 Zettabyte
1024 ZB = 1 Yottabyte