DriveSavers: How Does a Hard Drive Work?

How does a hard drive work?

Story courtesy of DriveSavers

The first hard drive was invented by IBM in 1956. Since then, this piece of technology has completely transformed the way we compute, work and live.

Hard disk drives have been in a nearly constant state of change for the last seven decades. Manufacturers are on a near constant quest to decrease their physical size and cost while increasing their data storage capacity. Considering the average 1GB flash drive today costs less than $5—down from $849 for a 1GB external hard drive sold by Seagate in 1995—it’s safe to say significant progress has been made.

So how are they doing this, what does a hard drive do and how does a hard drive work, anyway?

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