The main type of storage for personal computers is hard drives. These devices are used for efficiently storing huge amounts of data. Inside, drives resemble a record player with a number of magnetic records, known as platters. When saving, an access arm moves across the platters to write data.
Originally invented in 1956, early hard drives required a large amount of rack or floor space. It wasn't until the 1980's that they were shrunk down to about five inches and available in personal computers. At the time, personal hard drives held about 5 megabytes or the equivalent of one song. The amount of information that can be stored has jumped by leaps and bounds since then. Average home hard drives are now 500 gigabytes or 100,000 song files.
Businesses often need to store more information than can be held even by the largest of modern hard drives. RAID, a Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a way of combining multiple drives into one large space. This technique also allows businesses to maintain instant backups of their important data. Two identical drives can be linked together so that data is written to both at the same time. If one of them were to fail, the other would still have all the data.
Many portable devices, such as MP3 players, laptops and smart phones, require an internal hard drive. To store media such as photos, videos and music files, these devices need large amounts of storage space. Normal computer hard drives are easily damaged by being dropped, so portable drives are manufactured to be more resistant to shock.
There is a growing trend to make devices that use less power to make computers more environmentally friendly. Hard drives have naturally changed to use less power as they have become smaller; the parts inside simply do not have to move as much. Manufacturers have also created smarter methods for reading and writing information to minimize the amount of movement. Companies with a large number of hard drives also tend to invest a lot of power into cooling the computers. Newer components, including hard drives, have been designed to produce less heat.
Most computers now have built-in tools for detecting when a hard drive might be damaged. Known as Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology, or S.M.A.R.T., this software is capable of noticing sudden changes in things such as temperature and load times. Based on those trends, it is possible to alert the user to an increased likelihood of drive failure or data loss.
When moving large amounts of data from one computer to another, it is often useful to employ an external hard drive. These devices are identical to drives that appear inside of personal computers except that they are enclosed in a protective shell. This enclosure is designed to protect the device from falling damage, spilled liquids and static electricity. External hard drives can also be used to backup data by creating a copy that can be safely tucked away in a cool, dry place.
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