disk drive
33 ResultsDictionary
disk drive
A storage device that holds, spins, reads and writes magnetic disks or optical (CD, DVD, MO, UDO) disks. It may be a receptacle for removable disk cartridges, floppy disks or optical media, or it...
Dictionary
Definition: disk drive
A storage device that holds, spins, reads and writes magnetic disks or optical (CD, DVD, MO, UDO) disks. It may be a receptacle for removable disk cartridges, floppy disks or optical media, or it may contain non-removable platters like most hard disk drives. See magnetic disk, CD, DVD, magneto-optic disk and UDO.
The Early 1990s
This RAID II prototype in 1992, which embodies principles of high performance and fault tolerance, was designed and built by University of Berkeley graduate students. Housing 36 320MB disk drives, its total storage was less than the disk drive in the cheapest PC only six years later. (Image courtesy of The Computer History Museum, www.computerhistory.org) See RAID.
THIS DEFINITION IS FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY
All other reproduction is strictly prohibited without permission from the publisher.
© 1981-2010 The Computer Language Company Inc. All rights reserved.
Sponsored White Papers, Webcasts & Resources
-
Taking Measure of Talent
Take a look at this white paper to hear The Harvard Business Review's take on measuring talent.
-
Why drive vendors are cutting their warranties
Disk drive vendors Seagate and WD have cut their warranties by up to 80%. Why now?
-
More Ultrabooks to adapt hybrid disk drive approach to storage
Notebooks vendors trying to meet Intel's specs and pricing guidelines for its new Ultrabook platform are running into a bit of a problem when it comes to storage. According to DigiTimes, storage...
-
At Mojave mine, rare earth metals are elemental (photos)
Molycorp breaks ground on a mining facility that taps some of the world's most prized elements, used in the production of everything from hybrid cars to cell phones to hard disk drives.
-
WD buys Hitachi GST: the good and the bad
Another one bites the dust. Western Digital's acquisition of Hitachi's disk business means some things that consumers will like and things consumers won't. In the big picture it is a continuation...
-
MTBF, AFR and you
MTBF is the most widely misunderstood concept in consumer storage. There's something better: AFR. Here's what AFR means and a handy MTBF to AFR conversion table.
-
-
Microwave-assisted recording: 6 TB in a notebook?
Spin torque head sounds like the hangover from a long night of clubbing, but it could be the technology that brings Heat Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR) to the masses. And 6 TB 2.5" drives.
-
SDXC cards take on SSDs
The latest release of SD card specs includes ultrahigh speed (UHS-1). With data transfer rates up to 104 MB per second this is competitive with most hard drives. The UHS-1 SD card may be the SSD...
-
Why disks can't read - or write
We worry about a disk drive's "click of death" but the fact is that unrecoverable read errors are much more common. These errors are what remains after sophisticated signal processing fails to...
-
Bad, bad, bad vibrations
Shouting at a disk drive will cause it to stop. But what about the constant nagging disks get in noisy data centers or busy towers? That may be a bigger problem.
-
Tha amazing memristor - beyond Moore's law and beyond digital computing
Hewlett-Packard's researchers see an amazing future for the memristor - a very real, near mythical electronic component...
-
The disk error mystery
You'd think that after 50 years and many billions sold, disk drives would be well understood. And you'd be wrong. Take the case of latent sector errors.
-
Holographic storage bites the dust
After 9 years and $100,000,000, holographic storage pioneer InPhase Technologies has shut down without ever shipping a product. Their office building was also seized for non-payment of back taxes....
-
Are SSDs too fast?
When buying a new computer, the conventional advice is to buy the fastest one you could afford. That's what I did when I recently replaced an aging laptop with a desktop screamer sporting an Intel...
-
Flash disk drives are a hit with enterprise customers, says Sun
Today, Sun announced hundreds of wins across a range of industries for its eco-friendly Sun Storage 7000 series since it was introduced 5 months ago. According to Sun, over 17 petabytes of total...
-
How to archive on disk drives
Archiving on hard drives? Now that disk drives are cheaper per gigabyte than tape cartridges, you might be tempted to archive data on disk drives and stick them on a shelf. Don't do it! Your data...
-
Intel's tiny new flash drives
Data on your fingertip Disk drives are going to offer the best $/GB ratio for years to come. Flash drives have to offer something else. A case in point: Intel's new flash drives. Tinier than...
-
They died for Reddi-Wip?
Jon Edwards often manages what appears impossible. He has recovered precious data from computers wrecked in floods and fires and dumped in lakes. Now Edwards may have set a new standard: He found...
-
Seagate patents Compact Flash - 10 years late!
Can "prior art" be too prior? Dramatic evidence of America's broken patent system surfaced in last week's lawsuit by Seagate against STEC, the innovative developer of high-performance flash...
-
What your disk drive isn't telling you
because it's clueless. You know you've got a problem when your disk drive goes ka-thunk. A study of 1.53 million disks finds that data errors are much more common than outright failures. You...
-
3 mln removable hard disk drives to ship by 2012
Worldwide shipments of removable hard disk drives will increase at a 65% CAGR, totaling over 3 mln R-HDD solutions and additional disk cartridges in 2012, according to IDC. Total worldwide R-HDD...
The best of ZDNet, delivered
ZDNet Newsletters
Get the best of ZDNet delivered straight to your inbox
Vendor Showcase
