Storage Devices on the Hard Drive

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Recommended: Modern storage devices

Hard Drives and External Hard Drives

The purpose of a storage device is so the computer has a place to record and/or retrieve items to and from storage media (Shelly and Vermaat). There are many different ways to store and retrieve information two of them being a hard drive and an external drive. Both serve the similar purpose however, they are used for different reason or what some like to call, “their backup”.
A hard drive or otherwise known as a hard disk is a storage device that contains one or more inflexible, circular platters that use magnetic particles to store data, instructions, and information. The system unit on most personal computers contains a least one hard disk, sometimes called an internal hard disk because it is not portable (Shelly and Vermaat). In other words a hard drive is the location in a computer where all the computer programs and files are stored. The hard drives are classified as random access, digital, magnetic, and data storage devices.
According to Wikipedia how a magnetic disk works is by using a spindle motor in the drive rotates the magnetic medium at a certain speed, while a stepper motor-operated mechanism moves the magnetic read/write head(s) along the surface of the disk (Hard disk drive). To write data, current is sent through a coil in the head as the media rotates (Hard disk drive). The head's magnetic field aligns the magnetic particles directly below the head on the media (Hard disk drive). When the current is reversed the particles align in the opposite direction encoding the data digitally (Hard disk drive). To read data, the magnetic particles in the media induce a tiny voltage in the head coil as they pass under it. This small signal is amplified and sent to the floppy disk c...

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n.d. External Hard Drive Buying Guide. 21 November 2013. .
Best Buy. n.d. 21 November 2013. .
Hard disk drive. 21 November 2013. .
Rieck, Dean. The world’s simplest computer crash recovery plan. 21 January 2010. 21 November 2013. .
Shelly, Gary B. and Misty E. Vermaat. Microsoft Office 2010: Inroductory. Boston: Cengage: Course Technologies, 2011. Print.

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