[Cialug] Hard Drive Teardown

[Don Ellis]

There used to be a drawing on the wall everywhere I worked showing a
comparison in size between a human hair, a particle of smoke, a
fingerprint, and the head gap on a hard drive (and maybe a few other
items for comparison). The head gap was smaller than most or all of
the other examples, showing just how clean the drive has to be. That
was long before the current technology too, so the drawing should
probably be updated for today.

--Don Ellis


On Mon, Jun 27, 2011 at 9:25 PM, Todd Walton <tdwalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> Neat video on hard drives.
>
> Hard drive teardown
> http://machineslikeus.com/videos/hard-drive-teardown
>
> Bill Hammack opens up a computer hard drive to show how it is
> engineered. He describes how the "head" reads the magnetic information
> on the disk; reveals how a voice coil motor and a slider controls the
> position of that head. He also discusses how smooth a disk must be,
> and briefly mentions a mathematical technique that allows engineers to
> pack more information on a drive.
>
> --
> Todd