Hard Drive Guts

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Most of you probably haven’t seen the insides of your hard drive. This one recently died and I thought I would do an autopsy for you. The real shiny disks you see are the actual hard drive platters. These are what hold data for you. You will notice that this particular drive has two. Notice also the arms extending over and underneath the platters. This is actuator arm, slider, and head. This is what reads the platters and all your nice data on it. The big silver thing at the bottom right of the drive is the actuator that moves the arms back on forth. The big silver wheel in the middle of the platter is the spindle. This spins the platters at their designated speed: 4800rpm, 5400rpm, 7200rpm, 10000rpm, or 15000rpm. There is a ribbon that connects the heads to the logic board. This in turn outputs to the ide/sata cable that connects to the motherboard. In any regard, that’s the innards of a hard drive. Pretty cool, eh?

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