Magnetic Platter
July 12th, 2008
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Magnetic Platter
Computer hardware questions?
8. The surface of a magnetic disk must be ____________ before it can be used to store data.
A. formatted
B. reformatted
C. rotated
D. cleaned
9. A magnetic disk is divided into ___________ and ___________.
A. tracks; sectors
B. lands; pits
C. platters; spindles
D. files; clusters
10. To determine a disk’s density, multiply _________ by __________.
A. tracks; bytes per track
B. tracks; sectors
C. sectors; bytes per sector
D. tracks; bytes per sector
11. A hard disk’s _____________ allows a large amount of data to be recorded.
A. high rotational speed
B. slow rotational speed
C. higher magnetic charges
D. fewer sectors per track
12. A tape drive is most useful for _______________.
A. backup copies of hard drive
B. frequently accessed data
C. portable storage
D. audio files
8:a
9:A
10:B
11:A
12:A
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Solid State Drives (SSDs)
Of all the technologies found in a modern computer, I would have to say that over the past decade the device that has done the least to raise its game is the humble hard drive. It could be argued that over the years they have enjoyed significant increases in capacity, have become a great deal faster and a fair bit smaller, but for some time now it has been clear that the main storage device for your computer is also its biggest bottleneck.
My first hard drive held 20MB and I'm currently using one which holds 1TB so although I can admit that a 50,000 times increase in capacity is a substantial development, this doesn't deter from the fact that the technology involved has remained very much unchanged. A hard disk relies on a number of spinning discs, referred to as platters which are then read by a read-and-write head; the closest and rather crude approximation would be to think of a vinyl record being read by a stylus. Clearly the disadvantage of this technology is that it relies on moving parts and hence is limited in speed by the physical restrictions on the device, along with suffering potential reliability problems caused by having several magnetic discs each haphazardly spinning at 7,200 times a minute inside your machine.
A technology that has been threatening to break in to the mainstream consumer market for some time now is the Solid State Disk (SSD) which stores its data on flash memory chips rather than magnetic platters; much in the same way as a little USB memory key, otherwise known as a flash drive. A greater number of chips, therefore a larger storage capacity can be accomodated with the SSD as it is physically larger than a flash drive in size. The speed of the memory used and the actual interface between the SSD and the computer is significantly faster than utilised by a flash drive and hence more suitable for the intensive access required when using it as your main storage device.
Defragmentation is no longer required as the physical limitations of the hard disk are banished. Unlike a hard drive which would have to physically move to several positions on the disc to read a file that was split in to several pieces across the platter, it takes no longer to read data from several positions on a memory chip rather than just the one. The drive is more energy efficient and virtually silent because of the lack of movement.
One might wonder why we are still using the old cumbersome hard drives if such a technology is currently available and unfortunately there is one real sticking point. Compared to the production cost of a hard drive platter, the price of flash memory is relatively high so while you can pick up a 64GB SSD for around
About the Author
Chris Holgate writes a weekly article of all things tech related. He is a director and copyrighter of the online computer consumables business Refresh Cartridges who sell cheap ink cartridges,
toner cartridges
, computer hardware and other computer consumables online. An archive of his work can be found at
www.computerarticles.co.uk
.
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