Erk Changsila
Biology Department
George Mason University

The hard drive, or hard disk drive, is similar to a flash drive in that it stores data as well, however it can store much more data than the flash drive. Many people argue that the hard drive is the most important piece of hardware for the computer. It stores most of the computers information including the operating system with which the computer runs on. Introduced again by IBM in 1956, the hard drive is still used as the primary storage unit for information on the computer. The hard drive is made up of magnets and rotating metal plates. The first hard drive produced by IBM was called the 350 RAMAC. Over the years, IBM released a new model in 1961, the 1311, and again in 1973. Although the development of this piece of technology was well on its way, it was not very common for the average computer owner to have. It wasn’t until the 1980’s that hard drives became a common piece of equipment. Performance of a hard drive is measured in a number of different ways. Access time is a measure of how fast the hard drive can actually access the data it is storing for usage. Interleave helps the hard drive perform tasks without having to wait for a full rotation of the metal disks that contain the information. This greatly increases the speed of the hard drive. Rotational latency measures the amount of time it takes for the spinning of the disk to reach the point at which the hard drive can read the desired piece of information. Data transfer rate is the rate per seconds that a drive transfers information from place to place. Power consumption and power management are similar in the fact that they both are measured by how much energy the hard drive consumes to do its tasks. Eco friendly drives tend to be slower but are much better on the environment as they require less electricity to run.