The Hard Drives
So from the previous post, we now know what the hard drive is and why we use it. But if you're curious, you might want to know how it works. How can we store 4 trillion yes's or no's (1 and 0 aka binary), which is actually 500 GB, and the size of my hard drive. There are two types of hard drives: SSD (Solid State Drive) and HDD (Hard Disk Drive).
Hard Disk Drive
HDD work with actual disks in the hard drive. When given power, these disks spin, kind of like a DVD or CD player. As these disks spin, a little needle goes over them, reading the data. The little needle has a head which can send out little pulses gets a signal on if the spot on the disk is magnetic in a certain way. To write information, it sets the magnetically on the spot on the plate to later be read. And there is a little more to it, like how the information is transported and processes, but that's the basics. A needle and magnetic pulls or pushes.
HDD work with actual disks in the hard drive. When given power, these disks spin, kind of like a DVD or CD player. As these disks spin, a little needle goes over them, reading the data. The little needle has a head which can send out little pulses gets a signal on if the spot on the disk is magnetic in a certain way. To write information, it sets the magnetically on the spot on the plate to later be read. And there is a little more to it, like how the information is transported and processes, but that's the basics. A needle and magnetic pulls or pushes.
Here is a video from Wikipedia if you're a visual learner. The guy goes a little in-depth near the end, but for the most part it is pretty good. Wikipedia Article
Solid State Drive
Solid state drives are a lot different. The reason they are called solid state is because there are no moving parts. The most moving thing is electricity. So everything is set 'solid' in place. You may not know, but you've used a small solid state drive and you didn't even know it! Something called flash memory is the real cause for SSD's. Flash memory is in included in Flash Drives/USB Sticks, SD cards, RAM, and of course the SSD. It took forever to find a resource to explain it well enough, and I'm not sure I can explain it well enough, but here goes nothing. The SSD is a big set of chips on a board. These chips have a logic gate called NAND. What is a logic gate? A logic gate is a part on a computer chip that when information flows in, a specific result comes out. For example, an AND gate gives an output when two inputs are given. So if you have electricity flowing through one input and not the other, the signal doesn't go all the way through. Another example is the OR gate. Basically, one OR the other has to be true to give an output. One more example is the NOT gate. The output is NOT, what is given. It inverts the signal. Not too hard. A NAND gate combines AND and NOT. Basically, if two inputs are true, with AND, it would say that it is true, but it is the opposite because of the NOT. Lost? It's okay. How the SSD works is that there are a ton of gates right next to each other. When writing data, electrons get stuck in a gate. When you read the data, a certain voltage is sent through the system, and if the current goes through, it is a true, but if it doesn't go through, it is a false. This is what I understand out of it, but it is simply electrons getting trapped and weather they are there or not.
Solid state drives are a lot different. The reason they are called solid state is because there are no moving parts. The most moving thing is electricity. So everything is set 'solid' in place. You may not know, but you've used a small solid state drive and you didn't even know it! Something called flash memory is the real cause for SSD's. Flash memory is in included in Flash Drives/USB Sticks, SD cards, RAM, and of course the SSD. It took forever to find a resource to explain it well enough, and I'm not sure I can explain it well enough, but here goes nothing. The SSD is a big set of chips on a board. These chips have a logic gate called NAND. What is a logic gate? A logic gate is a part on a computer chip that when information flows in, a specific result comes out. For example, an AND gate gives an output when two inputs are given. So if you have electricity flowing through one input and not the other, the signal doesn't go all the way through. Another example is the OR gate. Basically, one OR the other has to be true to give an output. One more example is the NOT gate. The output is NOT, what is given. It inverts the signal. Not too hard. A NAND gate combines AND and NOT. Basically, if two inputs are true, with AND, it would say that it is true, but it is the opposite because of the NOT. Lost? It's okay. How the SSD works is that there are a ton of gates right next to each other. When writing data, electrons get stuck in a gate. When you read the data, a certain voltage is sent through the system, and if the current goes through, it is a true, but if it doesn't go through, it is a false. This is what I understand out of it, but it is simply electrons getting trapped and weather they are there or not.
This YouTube video explains it much better than I did:
So this is how your data is stored on your computer. Next up I will cover a more integral function of the hard drive when setting up Linux!
-scoutchorton
As always, vocab is here:
So this is how your data is stored on your computer. Next up I will cover a more integral function of the hard drive when setting up Linux!
-scoutchorton
As always, vocab is here: