The transition to the 3.5 "form factor took place in 1983, when a small Scottish company Rodime introduced the device RO351 with a capacity of 6.38 MB. And the first device with a form factor of 2.5 "was released by an American company PrairieTek in 1988. In the same year, a 63-megabyte 2.5 "hard drive appeared Toshiba Tanba-1, designed for installation in laptops.
Types of modern hard drives
Used on desktop computers for years did not change their size and weight. They still have a body of 3, 5 inches and measure approximately 26 × 102 × 147 mm. Weight depends on the power of a particular model, which in turn is related to the number of plates and the recording density expressed in gigabytes per square inch. All other parameters, such as capacity, data rate, access time and interface for communication with motherboard, have changed.
They are more quiet and energy efficient, which is important for mobile devices, such as laptops. The main drawback of all hard disks is the noise created by them, in which, in addition to the uniform noise of the rotating plates, the heads are scratched. These are electronic circuits based on flash memory. Actually these are not drives, but they are called in this way because they are identical for most traditional hard drives. Some models have a look similar to a 2, 5-inch hard drive, but it is lighter, thinner and does not have a characteristic housing profile.
In the 90s, the development of hard drives was influenced by two new technologies developed by IBM. The first of these is the magnetic heads on the giant magnetoresistive effect. This technology has allowed to achieve higher recording density - up to 2.7 Gbit / s. The second innovative technology was a new way formatting plates called No-ID. Its essence lies in the fact that the identification information of the sector is stored not in the surface of the disk, but in the permanent memory of the hard disk. This allowed to increase the recording density by about 10%.
The first semiconductor memories were built for years, and on a larger scale they started to be produced for years, but they were still expensive and had a small capacity, and the technology required clarification and did not have uniform standards. Only recently their prices fell to the level available to ordinary users.
Just a few years ago, the big problem was the rapid consumption of memory, so installing a system partition on this disk was not a good idea. However, the situation has changed due to the improvement of algorithms and controllers responsible for the preservation of cells.
Do not forget the manufacturers and increase the speed of hard drives. For a long time, the standard speed of rotation of the spindle was 5400 rpm, then it increased slightly and was already 7200 rpm. Periodically, the market appeared devices that had more impressive indicators. So, in 1999, Seagate introduced a line of fast hard drives Cheetah. Their high productivity was ensured by a spindle rotation speed of 15,000 rpm, which was more than 2 times higher than the standard value. The volume of such a device was 36 GB.
It can be divided into two groups because of the type of memory cells used. They are characterized by high strength, estimated in 000 recording cycles, as well as low thermal stability, but quite expensive. However, they are more prone to data errors, they stop working normally at temperatures below -25 degrees Celsius and can withstand up to 000 recording cycles. This is the most popular decision, primarily for economic reasons.
In general, you can install on your computer more than traditional hard drives. There are several standards, some of which have already disappeared from the market and have been replaced by more practical and modern solutions. In the near future, most of the future decisions will remain standard. There will also be more annoying data recovery, to which many are already accustomed.
A much more popular was a series of hard drives called Raptor Western Digital. Initially, these hard disks Developed for use in server systems, but then firmly entrenched in the segment gaming computers. Plates of the model Western Digital Raptor rotated somewhat slower than in Seagate Cheetah. The spindle rotation speed was "only" 10,000 rpm, but this was more than enough to leave the usual hard drives in terms of performance far behind. Unfortunately, the WD Raptor line was not reliable.
Due to its structure this means no mechanical components, they are much more resistant to shocks and vibrations, which is very important in laptops and leads to less destruction. The absence of rotating plates and moving heads also makes them completely silent components.
Those who keep really large amounts of data still do not have the choice and should choose hard disks, even if they omit the financial aspect. Data was recorded on one hundred bearing surfaces on both sides of the plates. Access time to data was from 600 ms to a second.
At the end of 2005, the method of perpendicular recording was mastered. Up to this point, absolutely all hard disks have been working on the parallel recording method. What was the essence of the new technology? When parallel recording is used, the magnetic particles are arranged in such a way that the vector of magnetic directivity runs parallel to the plane of the plate. This approach is the simplest, but it has one drawback: between domains (minimal cells of information), there is a need for fairly large buffer zones to reduce the interaction forces between them.
Thus, since its inception, he has served 13 years. The hard drive of the first disc paid off. It was not a long-term solution, but, unfortunately, Thomas Watson, the president of the corporation, got out of control at the unsuccessful board meeting. The disks, like all subsequent hard drive models, did not touch the surface of the media, but floated on the air cushion. In addition to modernizing the mechanics of recording and reading, the remaining parameters of the disc have been clearly improved. The disk was made in two versions: one with two modules.
Each module allowed up to 28 million characters. This is the peak of the ability, already working for decades in the method of parallel recording. A further increase in the recording density collided with a physical barrier in the form of a so-called superparamagnetic effect. This is a physical phenomenon in which a magnetic medium can not permanently store the information stored on it, if the thermal energy is greater than the energy of the disk recording head to change the state of information in one magnetic domain. The solution was the introduction of perpendicular recording technology, which makes it possible to further increase the recording density while simultaneously compensating for the barrier of the superparamagnetic effect.
On the contrary, using the method of perpendicular recording, the vector of magnetic directivity is already perpendicular to the surface of the disk, which significantly reduces the interaction forces. Consequently, the required size of the buffer zones also decreases. This allows you to increase the density of the recording.
Thanks to the method of perpendicular recording of the hard disk industry, the terabyte line was subdued: in 2007, Hitachi introduced the world's first model The Deskstar 7K1000 the volume of 1 TB.
All currently available discs use perpendicular recording. In the popularization of semiconductor storage devices based on flash memory, the mobile revolution also helped many - it's hard to imagine a smartphone with hard drive. Due to data storage, it is impossible to ignore yet another solution, even the more common - data clouds. With the cloud, users can access their data from anywhere in the world. Internet storage services are also often used to archive backups that are important to data users, but for obvious reasons they are not an alternative to local storage methods.
Despite the fact that SSDs occupy an increasing and large part of the data warehousing market, hard disk technologies do not go to the background and continue to improve. So, Western Digital's technology looks very promising HelioSeal, which provides for the use of helium instead of air inside the case of the hard drive. Due to the fact that helium is lighter than air, an ideal environment is created inside the HDD for moving plates with high speed. In addition, vibrations between the plates and the reading head are reduced.
In addition, a large capacity with smaller dimensions of one cell will simultaneously mean a decrease in performance. The drive itself is impressive not only in capacity. Manufacturers are also experimenting with solutions such as, for example, it is very likely that models with a capacity of several terabytes will see the market next year. This is a technology that preliminarily prepares a magnetic medium, exposing it to nanolithographic processes used in manufacturing the newest integrated circuits.
The future of mass storage of leading manufacturers
The future is really exciting. Will the new generation of devices be more compact, faster or cheaper or more energy efficient? There are many applications for storage, and each of these applications requires a different technical implementation to optimize system functionality and user experience. The future of hard disks is the continuous development of capabilities related to their density and storage capacity, as well as the capabilities associated with the applications for which they are intended.
The first "helium" hard drives were introduced in late 2013 under the name Ultrastar He6. And in early December, Western Digital announced the release of an updated line of devices Ultrastar He10. These devices use the perpendicular recording method, and their density is 816 Gbit per square inch. The capacity of the Ultrastar He10 is 10 TB.
We see a strong market trend in which mobile devices arrive. The increasing use of mobile devices with low bandwidth means that centralized and networked storage is becoming more important than ever. The best solution for the digital life of all users is a personal cloud that allows you to quickly act within a local seat and easily accessible from outside the network from mobile devices. One device, secure, at home or in the office, provides one place for the maintenance of all of its users and the entire family.
Another interesting technology is Seagate SMR (shingled magnetic recording) - method of perpendicular recording with overlapping tracks. Unlike the usual perpendicular approach, where the information tracks are located side by side, in SMR technology the tracks overlap each other, forming something resembling a tiled roof. Using SMR allows you to increase the recording density by about 25%. By the way, Seagate and Western Digital have already adopted this technology.
The richer the content, the higher its resolution, the more storage space you need. Currently, this technology is available only in the United States. how cloud cloud, and the personal cloud offer users opportunities and opportunities. Personalized clouds provide simple, mobile data access from anywhere, comfort and power of all data and quick access to local Area Networks. Realizing that the preferences and habits of users are different, the applications available on the devices of the "My Cloud" series allow access to both My Cloud and personal cloud accounts in one view.
Also in the near future it is planned to establish the production of hard disks using the technology HAMR (Heat-assisted magnetic recording), which combines magnetic reading and magneto-optical recording. The principle of its work is that the recording of information is carried out by heating the domain
The bad sector on the hard drive is a tiny cluster disk space, faulty sector hard drive, which does not respond to attempts to read or write.
On the other hand, these unique functions give each technology the opportunity to be more adapted, more suitable for specific purposes. Data storage on computers has developed quite a lot, because from year to year the capacity of hard disks is constantly increasing. But when did this phenomenon start to store data in the environment?
Well, everything is connected with very old punched cards. The holes on the punched cards correspond to the instructions used to automate the piano, for example, or to start up early computers. Later these perforated cards began to lose ground in front of the tape, but that does not mean that the hard drive was the direct successor of the punched cards. Long before the hard drives on the cylinders, memory was stored.
For example, if you take the usual Dvd disc in his hands, there may be scratches, or cracks - which can not be restored in any way, or a drop of dirt - which can be carefully removed and returned to work. So with a hard drive, regardless of whether the magnetic or solid state drive, there are two types of bad sectors - one as a result of physical damage that can not be repaired, and others due to program errors that can be fixed.
The cylinder memory has read heads, but does not work as a hard disk. Basically, the read head remains in place, while the drum is the one that changes its position. Despite the fact that these drums could store much more data than a punched card, their capacity was quite small compared to modern standards, several kilobytes each.
Magnetic cassettes are still used today for data storage, but with enough time for access, they should actually work as an audio cassette when searching for data. For a while they could carry small files. The first floppy disks were 8 inches in size and could only contain 80 kilobytes of data.
Types of bad sectors
There are two types of bad sectors - physical and logical, or otherwise they can be called "hard" and "soft".
Physical (hard) - a bad sector is a storage cluster on the hard drive that is physically damaged. Maybe your computer (laptop) was falling, or because of voltage spikes, it was turned off incorrectly, or maybe the disk is already worn out, there are various physical damages that can not be corrected unfortunately ...
They had much higher capacity and much lower prices. Of course, the then manufacturers could not imagine that many years later the desire to develop personal computers would lead to machines of much smaller size and weight, but also with much greater functionality.
Since portability is the most important goal of the manufacturers, we moved from redundant computers to laptops, and then a few more steps that led us to smart phones and tablets. But what was the starting point for portable personal computers and what are the key stations, until we get to our current laptop?
Logical (soft) - a bad sector is a storage cluster on the hard disk that does not work properly. Perhaps the operating system while reading from the hard drive, for some reason was denied (failed) and marked this cluster as a bad sector. You can fix such bad sectors by overwriting the disk with zeros, or by performing low-level formatting.
Undoubtedly, Alan Kay had the idea of laptops. With these children they will have access to digital media. Although its use was purely educational, the design was inspired by the army's need for the transfer of a large number of documents. In any case, the original design paved the way for manufacturers of portable computers.
Since portability is the most important goal of the manufacturers, we moved from redundant computers to laptops, and then a few more steps that led us to smart phones and tablets. But what was the starting point for portable personal computers and what are the key stations, until we get to our current laptop?
The causes of bad sectors in the hard drive
Unfortunately, among the new devices, there is a lot of factory rejection and very often the hard drive already comes with bad sectors ... And as it was written earlier, the cause of bad sectors can be falls, and maybe the dust got. Yes, because of a small speck of dust, you may start to gradually destroy your hard drive. The reasons are huge and in fact the knowledge that your hard drive is poured due to dust - does not solve the problem in any way and will not add to you a good mood.
Again, as it was written above - the sector can be marked as failing, but it is not. Previously, such a virus did, but besides them there could be some kind of system failure, at the moment of recording, there could be a loss of electricity and the system will mark the sector as bad, and there can be many reasons, but some of them are fixable!
Loss of data and hard drive failure
If you think that the problem with broken sectors and the loss of hard drive performance is a rarity, then you are very much mistaken! No one is immune from this, therefore it is recommended to make copies of important information, for example in cloud storage, there your data is more protected from loss.
Even if the hard disk with the help of special programs can be reset to zero - this will not save the information that was on it.
Always back up important information to another medium or to the cloud, and if you see a scan for errors every time you turn on the computer, or if the hard drive makes any sounds - immediately make a copy of the data, and start diagnosing the hard drive, to look into what the problem is. After all, he may soon say goodbye to you ...
How to check and repair bad sectors
One of the most popular programs for testing the hard drive Victoria, it's free, there are a lot of free and paid, among which we will consider the hdd regenerator.
In each operating system, there is a built-in type hard check disk. You can see it if your computer has been turned off in the wrong way, or if your hard drive is already off, then every time you turn on it will be scanned. You can start the scans by clicking on any disk with the right mouse button =\u003e go to Properties =\u003e Tools =\u003e in the "Scan Disk" field, click "Run Scan".
Through standard program you can check the status of your hard drive, and during the scan, minor problems will be fixed.
Checking with Victoria
This program is free and in its downloading there are no problems, so if you are someone to try to vparit it for money - you can safely close the site. It can be scanned in both the Windows shell and Dos (with Live Cd). My recommendations to scan from the boot disk, in such cases, checking and repairing the disk will be more effective!
Also: do not forget that during the correction or rewriting of bad sectors - all information from the hard disk can disappear! For this, if you decide to try to repair your hard - do backup copy their data. During normal diagnostics, the data will not disappear anywhere. 🙂
As I already said, it's better to scan a hard disk from the LiveCD, it can be downloaded on any torrent tracker and there will be all the necessary programs to work with the hard disk.
1.Download resuscitator: download is not necessarily on the resource tfile, you can download it on others. But if you download from tfile, then click not on the big blue "Download torrent" button, as additional extra software will be installed, and under the button "download torrent" as in the picture
2. We write the downloaded image to a disk or a USB flash drive: I recommend doing this with the Rufus application.
Download Rufus =\u003e run this utility =\u003e we connect the flash drive (you can write the disk in the same way or go to the sd card) =\u003e in the "device" field we select the flash drive =\u003e on against "Create boot disk»Select =\u003e we find the image file of the above reanimator (with iso extension) =\u003e select it, click" OK "and in the main window select" Start "=\u003e wait for the end of the process.
3. When you turn on the computer from the BIOS or Boot menu, and;
4. When you boot your computer from the resuscitator - choose the right program to work with the hard disk. In this example, Victoria.
5. In the list of detected drives, select the one you want to scan, and go to the Test tab
In the Test tab, we define the actions during the scan:
Ignore -skip the broken sector;
Remap -reassigns broken sectors;
Erase - zeroes out the broken sectors, overwrites many times until this sector is replaced from the backup zone.
For normal viewing state of hard disk to see if there are any broken sectors, put a tick in Ignore and start scanning. If you want to restore bad sectors - put on Erase and press Start (in this method possible loss of data from the hard drive!). You can try using Remap to reassign the broken sectors.
This procedure can take from several hours to several days!
In this regenerator assembly there are a lot of programs for working with the hard disk, for example hdd regenerator.Through the hdd program regenerator can do the same actions as in Victoria, that is, fix the bad sector. During the start of the program you will be asked to choose the type of scan:
1. Scan and restore the drive;
2. Scan without restoration;
3. Overwrite bad sectors before winning 🙂
At the end of the scan, you will see statistics, and perhaps you will get some more life time for your hard drive.
If Victoria and hdd regenerator did not help you - in the same assembly you can use the program for low-level formatting HD Low Level Format Tool. The program will format your hard drive, clear the partition table, MBR and each byte of data, and erase the path to the broken sectors, which probably will give you even more time to live on your hard disk.
These methods should be enough for you to understand if you have broken sectors, and also using these methods you will restore the hard drive, or you will understand that it's time to buy a new one. If there are additions and other ways - write comments! Good luck to you 🙂
