I've always known the concept that harddrives work at, but I've never really thought about it until now when I'm getting an external HD to back my stuff up since my mountain of DVDs is becoming too unwieldly.
How on earth does a harddrive manage to maintain that nm spacing between head and platter (like I'm pretty sure computer desks are not that stable, let alone I-Pods or notebooks)? Let's not even talk about how the reader manages to maintain it's lateral position over a ridicuously small area on the platter that represents a bit with all the movement going on around (even the vibration of the motor or external ones like the desk shaking).
And how does the arm move from center to edge at 60 times per second without flexing (I really want to see a video of that if anyone knows of one)?
Is it that flexing on the order of nm is much bigger than I imagine? Or that harddrives actually don't get read often enough to make a difference (RAM being accessed much more often than the HD once the data has been loaded on). Even if those were true though, you would think that bad data would be written a lot more often than it seems to be since I often jerk my entire desk when I spin my chair around and the arm rest hits the edge. Or has anyone ever actually tried jerking their harddrive while it's in the middle of writing a big file? You would also think that even when it's powered off and you are moving the tower, I-Pod, or notebook around that when you place it on the table it would cause the head to smash into the platter.
How on earth does a harddrive manage to maintain that nm spacing between head and platter (like I'm pretty sure computer desks are not that stable, let alone I-Pods or notebooks)? Let's not even talk about how the reader manages to maintain it's lateral position over a ridicuously small area on the platter that represents a bit with all the movement going on around (even the vibration of the motor or external ones like the desk shaking).
And how does the arm move from center to edge at 60 times per second without flexing (I really want to see a video of that if anyone knows of one)?
Is it that flexing on the order of nm is much bigger than I imagine? Or that harddrives actually don't get read often enough to make a difference (RAM being accessed much more often than the HD once the data has been loaded on). Even if those were true though, you would think that bad data would be written a lot more often than it seems to be since I often jerk my entire desk when I spin my chair around and the arm rest hits the edge. Or has anyone ever actually tried jerking their harddrive while it's in the middle of writing a big file? You would also think that even when it's powered off and you are moving the tower, I-Pod, or notebook around that when you place it on the table it would cause the head to smash into the platter.
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lol Still works as far as I know, its got windows ME or something on it.
