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Disk Drives Explained

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the stuff-to-read dept.

CowboyRobot writes "Magnetic disk drives are one of those things I usually take for granted without thinking about, but I recently realized how little I understood about how they really work. ACM Queue has an article from their 'Storage' issue titled, 'You Don't Know Jack About Disks', which does a very good job of explaining exactly how magnetic disks have evolved since the 70s and how they work today."

2 of 132 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Nintendo Gamecube by hbackert · · Score: 5, Informative

    Wrong. Found in many places on the Internet: like here in this GC FQA: it's not true that GC disks spin backward. You can check it out youself. Instead the CD starts at the outer part of the disk and the laser then moves towards the inside. Normal CD-ROMs and DVDs start at the inside and go outside (and slow down while doing that).

  2. All you want to know about by Cee · · Score: 5, Informative

    Well, there's an interesting article about hard drives here. Watch out, though, it's quite long and it's an easy way to waste some hours... But sure you wanted to know why we don't need to park the hard disk's heads anymore? =) Or, that in fact, there are holes in the hard drive, so it can "breathe".