Hard Drives: Two Critical Things You Should Know About Them

Hard drives. How much do you know about them? Well, here's a little trivia for you. Decades ago, hard drive meant something else. For regular folks like you and me, hard drive was definitely not defined as an object. Back in the days, hard drive was far from being an object. In this day and age, it’s a lot different. Hard drive now refers to the hardware device found inside a computer. Hard drive or hard disk drive is where all the data are stored.

In many respects, the hard drive is your computer. It’s where all the data in your computer is stored for the long term — not just the things you save, but all the code required for your operating system, the framework browsers use to connect to the internet, drivers for your accessories, and everything else. When people talk about computer storage, they are talking about the hard drive.

(Via: https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/what-is-a-hard-drive-your-guide-to-computer-storage)

A computer would definitely be useless without a hard drive. But that wasn’t the case in the early days. It's quite interesting to know that data storage was a lot different in those days. As a matter of fact, hard drives didn’t even exist then.

In the very early days, computers didn’t have hard drives at all, so they needed different ways to store data so that it could be accessed when necessary. Those old timey ways included rolls of magnetic tape inscribed with data, and yes, punch cards that could be slotted in and read by the computer.

(Via: https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/what-is-a-hard-drive-your-guide-to-computer-storage)

Thanks to Reynold Johnson, the hard drive was invented. The year was 1956 when Reynold Johnson developed the pioneering process of storing data in metal disk. This was a breakthrough because at that time, data were being stored in a magnetic tape or drum.

The first real hard drive was developed by Reynold B. Johnson at IBM, in 1956. Johnson’s team was working with better ways to store data on things like magnetic tape. They created ways to store information (in the form of bytes) on magnetic disks instead, which could be overwritten with new information as desired. This led to the development of an automated disk that could read itself in a manner similar to a record player — except much larger.

(Via: https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/what-is-a-hard-drive-your-guide-to-computer-storage)

Those are just a few cool things to know about a hard drive. The evolution of which is really quite interesting. Aside from those cool and interesting things about a hard drive, there are crucial things that you should know about it as well. The first of which is this; hard drives don't last forever. As much as you or anybody would want to make it last forever, they just don't. Hard drives have a lifespan.

Traditional hard drives (also known as HDDs), which you’ll usually find in desktop computers and some cheaper laptops, will often fail sooner because they use moving parts. The average life of a hard drive depends on a lot of things, like the brand, type, size, and interface method, but you’re looking at about four years on average.

(Via: https://lifehacker.com/how-long-will-my-hard-drives-really-last-1700405627)

The most you could do is to prolong the lifespan of your hard drive through regular maintenance checks. That's all. Still, the day will come when your hard drive will fail you. Sounds like the end of the world but it's not. You see, the second critical thing to know about your hard drive is that the data stored in it can be recovered. There's a good chance for you to get your data back as long as you don’t open your hard drive. The tips on https://www.harddriverecovery.org/hard-drive-recovery.html will come in very handy the day your hard drive fails.

Hard Drives: Two Critical Things You Should Know About Them is republished from http://www.harddriverecovery.org

source https://www.harddriverecovery.org/blog/hard-drives-two-critical-things-you-should-know-about-them/