Hard Disk Basic Terminologies

Definition of Hard disk

"Hard disk is a long term, high capacity magnetic storage media." As the name indicates it is rigid in its structure as compared to other storage media like floppy disk. Hard disk is also been recognized as HDD/hard drive as well.

RPM (Revolution per Minute)

The performance (how fast the hard disk is) of a hard disk is measured using the term RPM mean Revolution per minute. It is actually the number of revolutions of platters per minute in order to retrieve or store data on hard disk storage media. The higher the RPM rate the faster the way to access data from hard disk media and vice versa. The range of RPM varies from disk to disk from 5400 to 15000 RPM.

Seek Time

It is the time taken by a hard disk to find data on its storage media. The faster the seek time the faster the data to be found on its storage surface and vice versa. In other words seek time is the time between CPU request the for a file and the hard disk sent out first byte of the file.

Hard Disk Cleaning

It is the most commonly term being used with hard disk. Hard disk cleaning is a way to delete unnecessary data on hard disk such as temporary files. The purpose of hard disk cleaning is to free some space on hard disk magnetic media and also to boost up its speed. Hard disk cleaning operation can be performed by different software utilities.

Hard Disk Scanning

Scan disk is an operation used to check out hard disk storage media for errors and to fix or marks those storage areas as well in order not to write any data on those storage areas in future. Hard disk scanning requires in case of crash of computer system or an abnormal shut down of the pc.

Hard Disk Partitioning

Hard disk portioning is a process of rationally dividing a hard disk. There are several purposes behind rationally dividing a hard disk. Amongst many is to install more than one operating system, to manage the files in a better and also to ease of use by multiple users. By default the first partition of the hard disk is considered as C drive and so on. If want more detail on hard disk partition then visit our detailed hard disk partition web page.

Hard Disk Formatting

In general the English word "format" means to arrange something. In case of hard disk formatting mean to arrange the tracks and sectors of hard disk before they are being used for data storage.

There are two major type of hard disk formatting:

Low-Level Formatting

Low-level formatting is also known as "true" hard disk formatting because it is more related to physical properties of the hard disk. In low-level formatting we outline the position of the tracks and sectors of the hard disk and also writing the control structures that where the tracks and sectors are to store the data. Low-level formatting results in erase of all the data present on the platters of the hard disk.

High-Level formatting

Low-level formatting outline tracks and sectors but no data has been written on hard disk. In case of high-level formatting we write file system structures on hard disk. This enables us to write down data on our hard disk.

Hard Disk Defragmentation

Hard disk defragmentaiton is a way to reorganize the data on hard disk. We know that on a hard disk data are stored in the form of files. When we try to store some file on hard disk then our operating system tore up the file into several parts because it is difficult to find out consecutive capacity space equal to file size. Then these pieces of file are stored haphazardly anywhere on hard disk empty space has been find out. On retrieval process operating system first has to locate, combine those parts of file which is time consuming process and thus decreases the performance of our system. To overcome this deficiency we use hard disk defragementation in order to store file fragment in consecutive memory location and operating system takes less time in management of files.