A hard disk drive
[2] (HDD) is a
non-volatile,
random access device for digital data. It features rotating
rigid platters on a motor-driven
spindle within a protective enclosure. Data is magnetically read from and written to the platter by
read/write heads that float on a film of air above the platters.
Introduced by IBM in 1956, hard disk drives have fallen in cost and physical size over the years while dramatically increasing in capacity. Hard disk drives have been the dominant device for
secondary storage of data in
general purpose computers since the early 1960s.
[3] They have maintained this position because advances in their areal recording density have kept pace with the requirements for secondary storage.
[3] Today's HDDs operate on high-speed serial interfaces; i.e.,
serial ATA (SATA) or
serial attached SCSI (SAS).
HDDs record data by magnetizing
ferromagnetic material directionally. Sequential changes in the direction of magnetization represent patterns of binary data bits. The data are read from the disk by detecting the transitions in magnetization and decoding the originally written data. Different encoding schemes, such as
Modified Frequency Modulation,
group code recording,
run-length limited encoding, and others are used.
A typical HDD design consists of a
spindle that holds flat circular disks called
platters, onto which the data are recorded. The platters are made from a non-magnetic material, usually aluminum alloy or glass, and are coated with a shallow layer of magnetic material typically 10–20
nm in depth, with an outer layer of carbon for protection. For reference, standard copy paper is 0.07–0.18 millimetre (70,000–180,000 nm).
[6]
The platters are spun at speeds varying from 3,000
RPM in energy-efficient portable devices, to 15,000 RPM for high performance servers. Information is written to, and read from a platter as it rotates past devices called
read-and-write heads that operate very close (tens of nanometers in new drives) over the magnetic surface. The read-and-write head is used to detect and modify the magnetization of the material immediately under it. In modern drives there is one head for each magnetic platter surface on the spindle, mounted on a common arm. An actuator arm (or access arm) moves the heads on an arc (roughly radially) across the platters as they spin, allowing each head to access almost the entire surface of the platter as it spins. The arm is moved using a
voice coil actuator or in some older designs a
stepper motor.
The magnetic surface of each platter is conceptually divided into many small sub-
micrometer-sized magnetic regions referred to as
magnetic domains. In older disk designs the regions were oriented horizontally and parallel to the disk surface, but beginning about 2005, the orientation was changed to
perpendicular to allow for closer magnetic domain spacing. Due to the
polycrystalline nature of the magnetic material each of these magnetic regions is composed of a few hundred magnetic
grains. Magnetic grains are typically 10 nm in size and each form a single
magnetic domain. Each magnetic region in total forms a
magnetic dipole which generates a
magnetic field.
For reliable storage of data, the recording material needs to resist self-demagnetization, which occurs when the magnetic domains repel each other. Magnetic domains written too densely together to a weakly magnetizable material will degrade over time due to physical rotation of one or more domains to cancel out these forces. The domains rotate sideways to a halfway position that weakens the readability of the domain and relieves the magnetic stresses. Older hard disks used
iron(III) oxide as the magnetic material, but current disks use a
cobalt-based alloy.
[7]
A write head magnetizes a region by generating a strong local magnetic field. Early HDDs used an
electromagnet both to magnetize the region and to then read its magnetic field by using
electromagnetic induction. Later versions of inductive heads included metal in Gap (MIG) heads and
thin film heads. As data density increased, read heads using
magnetoresistance (MR) came into use; the electrical resistance of the head changed according to the strength of the magnetism from the platter. Later development made use of
spintronics; in these heads, the magnetoresistive effect was much greater than in earlier types, and was dubbed
"giant" magnetoresistance (GMR). In today's heads, the read and write elements are separate, but in close proximity, on the head portion of an actuator arm. The read element is typically
magneto-resistive while the write element is typically thin-film inductive.
[8]
The heads are kept from contacting the platter surface by the air that is extremely close to the platter; that air moves at or near the platter speed. The record and playback head are mounted on a block called a slider, and the surface next to the platter is shaped to keep it just barely out of contact. This forms a type of air bearing.
In modern drives, the small size of the magnetic regions creates the danger that their magnetic state might be lost because of thermal effects. To counter this, the platters are coated with two parallel magnetic layers, separated by a 3-atom layer of the non-magnetic element
ruthenium, and the two layers are magnetized in opposite orientation, thus reinforcing each other.
[9] Another technology used to overcome thermal effects to allow greater recording densities is
perpendicular recording, first shipped in 2005,
[10] and as of 2007 the technology was used in many HDDs.
[11][12][13]