How is a hard drive arranged? What are hard drives? What role do they play in a computer? How do they interact with other components? What parameters to consider when choosing and buying a hard drive, you will learn from this article.

HDD- short name for " Hard Disk Drive". You will also meet English HDD- and slang Winchester or abbreviated Screw.

In a computer, the hard drive is responsible for storing data. The Windows operating system, programs, movies, photos, documents, all the information that you download to your computer is stored on your hard drive. And the information in the computer is the most valuable thing! If the processor or video card fails, they can be bought and replaced. But lost family photos from last summer's vacation, or a year's worth of accounting data for a small business, are not so easy to recover. Therefore, the reliability of data storage is given special attention.

Why is a rectangular metal box called a disc? To answer this question, we need to look inside and find out how the hard drive works. In the picture below you can see what parts the hard drive consists of and what functions each part performs. Click to enlarge. (Taken from itc.ua)

I also suggest watching an excerpt from the Discovery Channel program about how a hard drive works and works.

Three more facts you need to know about hard drives.

1. The hard drive is the slowest part of a computer. When the computer freezes, pay attention to the hard drive activity indicator. If it blinks frequently or stays on, then the hard drive is executing the commands of one of the programs, while all the others are idle, waiting for their turn. If the operating system does not have enough high-speed RAM to run the program, it uses hard disk space, which greatly slows down the entire computer. Therefore, one way to increase the speed of your computer is to increase the amount of RAM.
2. The hard drive is also the most fragile part of a computer. As you learned from the video, the engine spins the disk up to several thousand revolutions per minute. In this case, the magnetic heads "hover" above the disk in the air flow created by the rotating disk. The distance between the disk and heads in modern devices is about 10 nm. If the disk is subjected to shock or shock at this point, the head may touch the disk and damage the surface with data stored on it. As a result, the so-called bad blocks"- unreadable areas, due to which the computer cannot read any file or boot the system. In the off state, the heads "park" outside the working area and overload from impact is not so terrible for the hard drive. Please make backup copies of important data !
3. The capacity of the hard drive is often slightly smaller than what the seller or manufacturer specifies. The reason is that manufacturers indicate the size of the disk, based on the fact that there are 1,000,000,000 bytes in one gigabyte, while there are 1,073,741,824 of them.

Buying a hard drive

If you decide to increase the amount of information storage in your computer by connecting an additional hard drive or replacing the old one with a larger one, what do you need to know when buying?

First, look under the cover of your computer's system unit. You need to find out which hard drive interface the motherboard supports. By far the most widely used standards SATA and outliving its age IDE. They are easy to distinguish by their appearance. The picture on the left shows a fragment of the motherboard, which is equipped with both types of connectors, but yours will most likely be one of them.

There are three versions of the interface SATA. They differ in data transfer speed. SATA, SATA II And SATA III at speeds of 1.5, 3 and 6 gigabytes per second, respectively. All interface versions SATA look the same and are compatible with each other. You can connect them in any combination, as a result, the data transfer rate will be limited to the slower version. At the same time, the speed of the hard drive is even slower. Therefore, the potential of fast interfaces can be revealed only with the advent of new high-speed drives.

If you decide to purchase an additional SATA hard drive, check if you have an interface cable as shown in the picture. It is not sold with a CD. (They are usually bundled with the motherboard.) Also, among the power supply connectors, there should be at least one free one for connecting a hard drive, or you may need an adapter from the old standard to the new one.

Now about the hard drive itself: The main parameter is, of course, the capacity. As I mentioned above, please note that it will be slightly less than stated. The operating system and programs require 100 - 200 gigabytes, which is quite a bit by modern standards. How much additional space you may need, you can determine empirically. Large volumes may be required, for example, to record high quality video. Modern films in HD format reach several tens of gigabytes.

In addition, among the main parameters indicate:

1. Form Factor- disk size. 1.8" and 2.5" disks are used in . For a desktop computer, you should purchase a 3.5-inch drive. They have the same SATA connectors and a laptop drive can work in a desktop computer. But small drives are made with an emphasis on compactness and low power consumption, and are inferior to larger models in terms of speed. And they cost more.
2. RPM- disk rotation speed. Measured in revolutions per minute ( RPM- short for revolutions per minute). The faster the rotation speed, the faster the disk writes and reads information. But it also consumes more energy. Today, the most common discs with 5400RPM And 7200RPM. Lower RPMs are more common in laptop drives, high capacity drives (greater than two terabytes), and so-called "green" drives, named for their reduced power consumption. There are also hard drives with a rotational speed 10000RPM And 15000RPM. They are designed to work in highly loaded servers and have an increased reliability resource, but they also cost much more than conventional ones.
3. Manufacturer. At the moment, there are several large manufacturers on the storage market. Among them there is quite tough competition, so they are in no way inferior to each other in quality. Therefore, you can choose any of the well-known names: Hitachi, HP, Seagate, Silicon Power, Toshiba Transcend, Western Digital.

HDD is a data storage device - a hard disk drive. "HDD" is an abbreviation for the English phrase Hard Disk Drive. Other names for HDD: hard drive, hard drive, hard drive, screw, hard, tin, tin.

What is HDD for?

HDD is used to store information. Information stored on a hard drive is called data. The data on the disk is organized by means of a file system and is represented by files.

HDD is computer memory. Do not confuse with RAM. The hard drive is non-volatile memory, RAM is volatile.

Winchester is now the main storage device, and if you have a computer, then there is a screw.

Working principle of HDD

Hard drives, that is, HDDs, work in a similar way to a device that everyone has long forgotten about - a "player", with a rotating disk and a needle for playing music. The converting elements (read/write heads) used in hard drives are similar to the read/write heads used in VCRs and stereo cassette recorders to access information on magnetic media.

In hard drives, information is stored on a rotating metal or glass plate covered with a magnetic material. As a rule, a disk consists of several plates connected by a common rod - a spindle. Each plate is something like a vinyl record with a record played by a turntable. Information is usually stored on both sides of the plate.

As the disk spins, an element called the head reads or writes binary data to the magnetic media. Information is written to the disk using some encoding method, of which there are a great many. The encoding method and recording density is determined by the disk controller.

Without delving further into the description of the principle of operation of the HDD, we can say that the hard drive is, in fact, a super-player with a bunch (or maybe just one) of records inside. Although, of course, due to the complexity of the device, the player did not lie next to it.

The past and future of HDD

The very first HDD was developed by IBM in the early 70s.

In 1983, with the release of the first IBM PC / XT computer, a hard drive from Seagate Technology appeared in the lives of thousands of newly minted, yet wild users. The early hard drive interface, designed by Alan Shugart (founder of Seagate Technology), was the de facto standard for HDDs for many years. In the future, Seagate's developments formed the basis of the ESDI and IDE interfaces. Shugart also developed the SCSI interface, which is now used in many modern computers.

By the way, now Seagate hard drives are the best-selling in Europe. And in Russia, who does not know the famous Barracudas?

The most important direction in the development of hard disk technology has always been an increase in their (drives) capacity. Progress in this area is especially driven by the ever-increasing demands of software. Increasing the capacity of drives is possible either by increasing the size of the drives themselves or by increasing the density of data storage. The HDD size limit has been reached, but the storage density limit has not yet been reached. But it didn't last long.

Need to know

1. HDD is a complex thing for storing information

2. The hard drive is short-lived and with constant use is unlikely to live more than three years

3. It is extremely undesirable to carry a hard drive (somewhere), turn it in your hands and generally remove it from the computer case. Winchester is very sensitive to vibration!

4. The internal structure of HDD is very complicated. If you once went to a circle of young radio amateurs, this does not mean at all that you can now repair hard drives. Repairing hard drives requires more than just a soldering iron!

5. Fans of poking around in hardware need to remember that by opening the HDA of a disk, you thereby put an end to both the information and the hard drive itself

6. In terms of storage security, storage media can be arranged in the following order (with increasing risk of data loss): head, paper, hard drive. Do not store important information on the HDD! And if you have to - always make backups!

7. If the information on the hard drive is not available for any reason, do not try to restore it! Most likely, you will only finally destroy it - it is better to contact professionals. Restoring information is not for you!

8. The word "HDD" is abusive and is not used in polite society, it characterizes something (to put it mildly) unreliable, short-lived and disgusting

When discussing computers, such terms as hard disk, hard drive or HDD are often used. These terms refer to one of the main components of a modern computer, which is used to store all of the user's data. In this article, you will learn what a hard drive is, why it is called a hard drive, and how to choose this component correctly.

What does a hard drive look like without a cover.

A hard disk is a data storage device that works on the basis of magnetic recording. In this device, data is recorded on a layer of ferromagnetic material deposited on the surface of an aluminum or glass disc.

A hard disk uses one or more of these disks, which are fixed on a common axis. During the operation of the device, these disks rotate at high speed (5400 revolutions per minute or more), while a magnetic head is located above the disk, which reads and writes information to the disk.

The hard drive is quite a sensitive device. In the event of a large overload, for example due to impact, it can easily fail. This vulnerability is especially relevant when the device is running. This is due to the fact that the hard drive is manufactured to the smallest tolerances. For example, the distance between the magnetic read head and the surface of a disk that rotates during operation is only 10 nanometers.

Now hard drives are being phased out little by little. Unlike hard drives, solid state drives have no moving parts and are therefore much more reliable, they are not so afraid of shocks and overloads. Other than that, SSDs work. This allows you to turn on your computer and run programs faster.

On the other hand, the cost of storing 1 gigabyte of data on an SSD drive is much higher. So, a 1 terabyte hard drive now costs about $50, while a 1 terabyte SSD costs at least $200. Therefore, hard drives are still the primary device for long-term data storage, and desktop and laptop manufacturers continue to build them into their devices.

But, over time, the cost of solid state drives will decrease and at some point they will completely replace hard drives. Today, SSDs are most often used in conjunction with a hard drive. The operating system and programs are written to the SSD drive, and user files are written to the hard drive.

What is a winchester

What does a hard drive look like.

The hard drive has several alternative names. For example, the abbreviation HDD is often used to denote it, which stands for hard disk drive, which can be translated as a hard disk drive. Another possible name is Winchester. This is an unofficial slang name that appeared back in the 70s.

According to one version, the hard drive began to be called a hard drive because of the IBM employees who developed the model 3340 hard drive. When creating this device, engineers used the short designation "30-30". This designation indicated that the hard disk consisted of two modules of 30 megabytes each. At the same time, it coincided with the name of the .30-30 Winchester rifle cartridge for the popular Winchester Model 1894 rifle. Because of this coincidence, the hard drive began to be called a hard drive.

This name took root well and was widely used until the end of the 90s. Later, it began to fall into disuse. Now in the USA and Europe, a hard drive is no longer called a hard drive, but in the CIS countries this name is still used.

Hard disk selection

In order not to be mistaken with, it is important to clearly understand what this disk will be used for. First, you need to decide on the type of hard drive. Now there are external and internal hard drives. usually have a protective case and a USB interface that allows you to connect this drive to a computer like a regular USB flash drive. This type of disk is usually used for transferring or backing up data. Internal hard drives are usually equipped with a SATA interface and are designed to be installed inside a computer.

And secondly, you need to choose a form factor. Modern disks are available in two versions: 2.5 and 3.5 inches. 2.5 inch versions are installed in laptops, and 3.5 inch in desktop computers. External hard drives can also be either 2.5 or 3.5 inches. 2.5" external drives are more compact and require no additional power, while 3.5" external drives offer more storage for the same price.

After you have decided on the type and form factor of the hard drive, you can look at the volume and other characteristics. For example, such characteristics as spindle speed and cache size are very important. The higher they are, the faster the drive will work. The manufacturer of hard drives is also important, now the highest quality models are produced by Western Digital and Seagate.

To compare the reliability of disks in the table, pay attention to the "Disco Days" (Drive Days). If the sample is less than 50,000, then it is too early to draw conclusions.

The total bounce rate in the first quarter of 2018 of 1.84% is the lowest on record. This indirectly means that disks in general are becoming more reliable.

Total

Despite numerous advice, the choice in practice is always more difficult. When buying, you have to choose between speed and memory. But the main thing is to prioritize. This mini-instruction will help you:

1. Decide on the purpose of the disk, this is a key factor when choosing a drive
2. How much hard drive do you need
3. Select manufacturer

External drives are just a box and a hard drive inside. Therefore, despite the fact that external drives are produced by many more companies. For example, an external drive may be from Transcend, but inside it will be .

As a result, if you managed to get a disk, then detailed information is always written on the hard disk itself, such as volume, model, manufacturer, and so on.

For Windows users

Through My Computer. This method is suitable for Windows OS. This is the easiest way and does not require the presence or removal of the hard drive itself. It is enough to do the following:

• right-click on the shortcut "My Computer";
• click on the "Management" item;
• go to the tab "Storage Devices" - "Disk Management";
• also in the "Device Manager" tab, select "Disk devices", there you will see the disk model.

The procedure may vary slightly depending on the version of Windows. In any case, in the Device Manager under "Disk Devices" you will see all the models of SSD and HDD that your operating system sees. If you know for sure that you have a hard drive and valuable data on it, well, this is a reason to turn to specialists.

For Linux users

via hdparm. Such a way. This program is automatically installed in every modern version of Linux.

To access it, you need to open a terminal and run hdparm in the console with the -i /dev/hda option. You will see the main parameters of your hard drive

With the help of programs

All will show which device you have installed. Also, this function is available in all applications for testing and analyzing the configuration of a computer. For example, in EVERSET, just select the "Storage" tab and you will see every characteristic of your Hard Drive.

Do not be surprised if you see a total volume less than stated, it is always lower than stated due to the characteristics of the manufacturers. The difference is always ~7%, so for a 500 GB drive, we get 465 GB of free space. If every gigabyte is important to you, always choose with a large volume.

The hard drive consists of aluminum or glass plates coated with a ferromagnetic material. divided into tracks, tracks are divided into sectors. Servo marks are applied to the magnetic surface. Thanks to them, the hard drive head quickly finds the desired sector. In case of mechanical damage or as a result of physical wear, the disk may become unstable. This means that there are other errors on it as well.

To detect bad blocks and other malfunctions, special utilities are used. The utility is able to scan the HDD sectors and give the user information. The evaluation of the state of the disk is carried out on other data.

SMART technology allows you to use the built-in self-diagnostic equipment and predict the device failure time. All SMART readings can be divided into 2 groups:

1. Parameters of natural disk aging (number of revolutions, head movements, on-off cycles).
2. Current drive parameters (height of the head above the surface, the number of reassigned sectors and search errors, the number of search errors).

In the list of attributes issued by SMART, the following are considered decisive:

1. Reallocated Sectors Count. Indicates the number of sector remapping operations. If the drive detects a read/write error, then it moves to a special remap standby section. The transfer process is called remapping. On modern disks, you cannot see the bad sector, since it is hidden in the remapped sector. Bad sectors are replaced by spare ones. If the Reallocated Sectors Count indicator turns yellow, the specialist determines that there are few spare sectors left.
2. Current Pending Errors Count. It is considered to be one of the critical indicators. Takes into account sectors not read the first time and marked as unstable. The decision on them is postponed until the next reading. If the read attempt succeeds, the sector will become stable. If the error occurs again, a recovery attempt will be made. If unsuccessful, the drive will perform a remapping operation. An increase in the Current Pending Errors Count attribute indicates disk degradation.

Unstable sectors appear very often. During a sudden interruption of power supply, a faulty power supply, improper shutdown of the OS, a disk write error may occur. An attempt scan will help get some of them back on track.

If in general there are no comments on the operation of the disk and other indicators of S.M.A.R.T. is normal, then when unstable sectors appear, no action needs to be taken. A non-zero value for the Current Pending Sector Count parameter indicates problems, but does not always mean that the problem is in the disk itself.

The HDDScan program is designed to analyze the state of drives, including most external ones, analyzes the integrity of the saved data on the drives. With HDDScan you can also view S.MA.R.T. attributes. Contains hard drive temperature monitoring, allows you to check the drive for performance - the ability to save and retrieve information.

The main purpose of the program is that connected inside the system unit of a computer or laptop, as well as hard drives connected using external ports.

Program features

The main features of the program:

• free use;
• there is no need to make an installation;
• check available for flash drives.

The HDDscan program is completely free and can be downloaded from the official website - http://hddscan.com. The latest version of the program today is HDDScan 4.0

Usage

Before you run the program, connect your hard drive or other storage device. If the connection was not made before launch, the drive will not be read.

The program will prompt you to select the device to be analyzed. After selecting, you need to click on the round button in the center of the window. A menu will appear, select the first item. You can click on the second item from the top - , but it is not always active, but only under certain circumstances, which are determined by the program at the stage of the preliminary check of the disk.

You can view device information before or after checking. After conducting preliminary testing, which the user, in fact, does not even know about, since it is carried out in a matter of seconds when choosing a disk for research, select the fourth menu item. The program will show information about the device, which can be verified with the information that was specified for the product by the manufacturer.

To start the analysis, click on the first menu item, which can be found again by clicking on the round button in the center of the window.

After the procedure is completed, a line will appear telling about it. Double-click on it - detailed information appears.

https://youtu.be/ZQqtow6nmDE

Scan Modes in HDDScan

There are several verification modes:

• standard check;
• random reading of certain parts of the disk;
• standard reading;
• testing that involves erasing information.

After the verification, a green, yellow or red sign will be indicated. Green indicates disk integrity, yellow indicates major problems that need to be fixed urgently in order for the device to continue working.

Results

1. No installation required.
2. You can check external and internal drives, hard drives and memory cards.
3. Several verification modes.
4. Display information about the drive.

A hard disk with important information may break during operation, due to accidental shock, or concussion. If you are prudent, then some of the files can be saved. In order not to take unnecessary risks, always make a backup and a preventive check for errors and bad sectors once every six months, after deleting junk files.

If during operation you notice that files and folders suddenly disappear, when you access a file, the computer slows down, information is copied from one disk partition to another for a long time, then you should also check.

HDD Diagnostics

A hard drive is made up of a large number of individual cells called sectors. Information is stored on each sector. Special programs are used to check sectors. During the test, the programs access each cell and measure the response time. The norm is considered to be 1 response in 3 milliseconds. If the program produces a result of 600 milliseconds or more, this result is considered critical, and the cell is incapacitated.

All modern HDDs for disk self-diagnosis. The idea of ​​the technology is that during boot, when the HDD is initialized by the motherboard, a self-control test occurs. The owner of the computer can look at the data from SMART and, if there are problems, has the opportunity in advance before they are lost.

A failed disk may have a slower read/write head speed, and therefore a slower data transfer rate. This will significantly reduce its performance. The computer will be slower to load, copy data from / to disk, run programs.

To diagnose hard drives for errors, bad sectors, to obtain S.M.A.R.T. , speed testing uses special programs.

Programs for checking HDD

SeaTools is a set of proprietary utilities, distributed free of charge. Can be downloaded from the official site. The proposed utilities check the disk for errors of different brands, can be used to fix sectors.

SeaTools for Windows performs validation in the Windows interface. The utility for DOS is an iso image from which you can make a boot disk for checking. This version is preferred if the user wants to avoid problems with disk access by the OS during the scan.

Western Digital Data Lifeguard Diagnostic

Western Digital Data Lifeguard Diagnostic is a utility developed especially popular among Russian users. Just like the previous one, it is free, it has a version for Windows and ISO. Provides S.M.A.R.T. information.

CrystalDiskInfo and CrystalDiskMark

CrystalDiskMark is capable of measuring average read and write speeds across different sections of a disk. This free, multilingual program is designed specifically for measuring speed. It works with the most popular versions of Windows. In addition to HDD, it can be used for SSD and flash drives. It is presented in two versions: for installation and portable.

CrystalDiskInfo is designed to diagnose hard drives and SSDs. You can view the health status and temperature of the drive. You can view S.M.A.R.T. like so much more.

Built-in Windows Utilities

Checking with built-in Windows tools. Go to "My Computer" ("This PC" for Windows 8.1). Right click on the drive to open "Properties". Select "Tools" from the menu and click the "Check" button. Wait until the verification process is completed and the computer displays the result.

HDDScan

HDD Scan is a good free program. Supports IDE/SATA/SCSI hard drives, RAID arrays, external USB/FireWire drives, SSDs, and flash cards. Allows you to check hard drives, bad sectors, get SMART data, perform various kinds of disk tests.

Victoria HDD

Victoria HDD is a popular software for diagnosing hard drives: it performs a disk surface test in order to detect possible malfunctions, checks for bad sectors, marks bad blocks.

Victoria HDD is a fairly simple and powerful hard drive test program that was created to evaluate performance, test, fix minor problems, and format a drive.

It's frustrating when your computer crashes. Some part breaks down, you have to spend time and money on repairs. It is doubly unpleasant if a breakdown occurs with a hard drive, because in this case the information stored on the device may suffer.

Drive manufacturers have long developed a number of drive self-diagnosis procedures. A set of technologies designed to protect the hard drive from sudden breakdowns is called S.M.A.R.T. By periodically contacting, you can monitor the status of your computer's hard drive and schedule drive replacement in advance.

During operation, some sectors of the hard disk are unreadable. The appearance of such a sector may be due to physical damage to the hard drive and factory defects. Often there is a violation of the working conditions of the hard drive - overheating or power problems.

Modern hard drives have a margin of safety in the form of a so-called reserve area. If, while working with the disk, the problem sector detects itself, the computer, on its own, "replaces" such a sector with one of the backup ones. Physically, of course, the sector remains in place, but its logical number goes to the sector from the reserve area.

Such an operation is called sector reassignment, it will practically not affect the operation of the computer. The problematic sector will be added to the defect list. The very fact of reassignment will be taken into account by increasing the Reallocated Sector Count counter. There is also a similar Reallocated Event Count parameter, their values ​​may differ. For example, if there was no actual remapping, and there were corrected soft-bads on the disk, then the Reallocated Event Count will increase, and the indicator of remapped sectors will remain unchanged.

The value of this counter can be viewed using any program for reading S.M.A.R.T data. The most popular programs in this sector are CrystalDiskInfo, HDDScan and Victoria. In addition, there are a number of programs supplied for their devices by hard drive manufacturers themselves.

By itself, remapping a sector on a hard drive is not a problem. , eliminate the consequences - also not necessary. This is a regular operation performed by the computer on its own, it does not require human intervention. However, the number of remapped sectors is an important indicator of how worn the disk surface is.

You should pay attention to the counter of remapped sectors when buying a hard drive from your hands. The Reallocated Sector Count of the new hard drive must be zero. As the hard drive is used, it is also worth, from time to time, accessing S.M.A.R.T data.

You should not judge the health of the disk by one parameter, the dynamics are also important. If the number of remapped sectors is constantly growing or has increased dramatically in a short period of time, this may indicate a serious defect in the disk surface and the hard disk needs to be replaced.

Portable hard drives are very convenient storage media. This is a regular hard drive inside a beautiful box that connects to a computer via USB. They are larger than flash drives, so they are actively used to store and transfer large amounts of information.

All manufacturers of hard drives produce their own models. By themselves, hard drives are reliable storage media. But portable models are simply more often connected and disconnected from the computer. Therefore, specific to portable USB devices are added to the standard malfunctions.

External drive not detected

When a client contacts us and says that he is, the first piece of advice is to try another wire. The reasons are different, maybe the wire itself is faulty or too long, and then there is not enough power for the hard drive. In any case, this is a simple action, so the first thing to do is try a different wire.

The next step is to try connecting the drive to another computer. There may be a problem with your USB ports or drivers on your computer. If - great. And if neither replacing the wire nor checking on another computer helped, then we recommend pulling the hard drive out of the box and connecting it directly to the computer.

Inside a beautiful box, as a rule, there is a regular SATA disk. And a separate adapter board from SATA to USB. Since external drives are often connected and disconnected, these boards sometimes fail. Even if, this may not be a physical malfunction, but a problem in the controller on the adapter board, which supplies the wrong voltage to the disk. This has already happened in our practice. Therefore, we take the disk out of the box and connect the disk directly via the SATA interface to check the operation of the disk.

Genuine Western Digital USB Drives

Owners may be surprised to see a Samsung hard drive inside the case. And owners of WD Elements or WD My Passport Ultra may be even more surprised when they pull the drive out of the box and find a USB drive inside.

If you opened the box and inside is a WD10JMVW or WD5000BMVW, congratulations, you have a real USB drive. In modern external WD models, the USB connector is soldered directly to the external electronics board and there is no adapter from SATA to USB familiar to other manufacturers. But to recover data, you must first adapt the USB connector to SATA.

If you found your drive in this table, then you have a drive with a USB connector right on the board. And if your wd5000bmvw is not detected or wd10jmvw is not initialized, then for diagnostics you first need to connect the drive via SATA.

The user-friendly USB interface is completely unsuitable for data recovery work. It does not allow sending ATA commands to the disk and working with hardware-failed hard disks in special technological modes.

In data recovery companies, in order to convert wd10tmvw, wd20nmvw or any disk from the table to a regular standard SATA connector, solder the wires directly onto the board. We also did this before, but now we use a more reliable method with replacing the board with the controller and the entire ROM.

One of our advantages as the largest data recovery center in Russia is our own stock of spare parts for all models of WD drives. And the second advantage, especially if your drive is new and under warranty, we are in the field of data recovery. All WD drives that are opened in our lab do not void the warranty.

Examples from our USB drive recovery practice

Suddenly, the disk was no longer detected in the Windows 10 operating system. As the connected device is seen, even a model appears in the manager, but the OS freezes. After installing a suitable board with a SATA interface, it turned out that one of the two heads of the disk was faulty.

The WD5000BMVV drive is not detected, sometimes beeps. When the disk is turned on, the spindle spins up and recalibrates, while the indicator is constantly on. Periodically clicks once, stops and re-spins the engine, then recalibrates again.

Many users are interested in the hard drive device. And for good reason, because today the most common storage of information on a computer is the HDD. Further, the principles of its work and structure will be disassembled.

The Winchester is essentially like a record player. It also contains plates and readheads. However, the HDD device is more complicated. If we disassemble the hard drive, we will see that the plates are mostly metal and covered with a magnetic layer. This is where the data is written to. Depending on the volume of the hard drive, there are from 4 to 9 platters. They are mounted on a shaft called a “spindle” and has a high rotation speed from 3600 to 10,000 rpm for mass consumption products.

Next to the block of plates is a block of reading heads. The number of heads is determined by the number of magnetic disks, namely one for each surface of the disk. Unlike a hard disk player, the head does not touch the surface of the platters, but hangs above it. This eliminates mechanical wear. Since the platters have a high rotational speed and the heads must be at an extremely small constant distance above them, it is very important that nothing can get into the inside of the case. After all, the slightest speck of dust can cause physical damage. That is why the mechanical part is hermetically sealed with a casing, and the electronic part is taken out.

Some users are interested in how to disassemble a hard drive. It must be understood that the analysis of the working drive involves a violation of its tightness. And this, in turn, will lead him into disrepair. Therefore, you should not do this if you are not ready to lose all the data on the storage medium. If you do not have an urgent need to open the drive, but are just curious about what the hard drive consists of, you can see a photo of the disassembled HDD.

That is why hard disks on magnetic disks are disassembled and assembled in a special laminar box during repair. It maintains the environment necessary for such work with the help of a highly purified air supply system and tightness. Having disassembled your disk at home, you will definitely bring it to an inoperable state.

The non-working read heads are next to the plate pack. This is also called "parking position". A special device brings the heads into the working area only when the disk has accelerated to the required speed. They all move together, not each separately. This allows you to have quick access to all data.

The electronic board, or controller, is usually attached to the bottom of the hard drive. Nothing protects her, and from this she is quite vulnerable to mechanical and thermal damage. It is she who controls the mechanics. A hard drive from a laptop differs from a standard 3.5-inch only in size. The principle of operation of a hard drive is exactly the same. They can differ only in the number of magnetic pancakes and the capacity of the drive.

As you can see, the hard drive device is subject to shocks, shocks, scratches, large temperature changes and power surges. And this makes it not a completely reliable carrier of information. It is because of this that the hard drive on a laptop fails more often than on a stationary PC. After all, portable devices are constantly shaken, sometimes dropped, taken out in the cold or placed in the sun. And this, in turn, negatively affects the hard drive.

To prolong the life of the HDD, do not subject it to drops and shocks, make sure that there is sufficient ventilation of the case, and perform any manipulations with the disk only when the power is off. These shortcomings led to the emergence of a new type of SSD hard drives. Gradually, they are crowding out HDDs, which once looked like great media.

logical device

We learned what a hard drive looks like inside. Now we will analyze its logical structuring. Data is written to the computer's hard drive into tracks that are divided into specific sectors. The volume of each sector is 512 bytes. Sequential sectors are combined into a cluster.

When installing a new HDD, you need to format it, otherwise the computer simply will not see the free space on the drive. Formatting is physical and logical. The first involves partitioning the disk into sectors. Some of them may be defined as "bad", that is, unsuitable for data recording. In most cases, the drive is already formatted before being sold.

Logical formatting involves creating a logical partition on a hard drive. This greatly simplifies and optimizes the work with information. A logical partition (or, as it is also called, a “logical disk”) is a specific area of ​​the drive. You can work with it as with a separate hard drive. To understand how a hard drive works with its partitions, it is enough to visually divide the hard drive into 2-4 parts, depending on the number of logical volumes. Each volume can have its own formatting system: FAT32, NTFS, or exFAT.

Technical data

HDDs differ from each other in the following data:

• volume;
• spindle speed;
• interface.

To date, the average volume of a hard drive is 500-1000 GB. It determines the amount of information that you can write to the media. The spindle speed will determine how quickly you can access data, that is, read and write information. The most common interface is SATA, which has replaced the already obsolete and slow IDE. From each other, they differ in bandwidth and the type of connector for connecting to the motherboard. Note that a modern laptop drive can only have a SATA or SATA2 interface.

This article looked at how a hard drive works, its operating principles, technical data and logical structure.