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Name: Dutch
Status: N/A
Age: N/A
Location: N/A
Country: N/A
Date: Around 1995
Question:
How does a computers hard drive work...store and send data? Please be as technical as possible.


Replies:
For details on this you should visit the library. There are many magazines devoted to computers and most will have introductory articles that would cover this type of information -- use the Reader's Guide or some other index (ask your local librarian for help) to locate specific articles of use to you.

Basically, the hard drive works the same as a cassette tape. The surface of a flat disk (a platter) is coated with a magnetic material (just like a cassette tape). A reading and/or writing head senses or creates a magnetic field over a very small part of the platter. Let us just discuss reading. The reading head moves over the platter in a specific pattern. If it senses a magnetic field it sends a "1" to the computer. If it does not sense a magnetic field it sends a "0". The pattern of "1"s and "0"s contains the information that the computer needs to do its work.

G Bradburn

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