A storage device that holds, spins, reads and writes magnetic disks or optical (CD, DVD, MO, UDO) disks. It may be a receptacle for removable disk cartridges, floppy disks or optical media, or it may contain non-removable platters like most hard disk drives. See magnetic disk, CD, DVD, magneto-optic disk and UDO.
The Early 1990s
This RAID II prototype in 1992, which embodies principles of high performance and fault tolerance, was designed and built by University of Berkeley graduate students. Housing 36 320MB disk drives, its total storage was less than the disk drive in the cheapest PC only six years later. (Image courtesy of The Computer History Museum, www.computerhistory.org) See RAID.
The Early 1990s
This RAID II prototype in 1992, which embodies principles of high performance and fault tolerance, was designed and built by University of Berkeley graduate students. Housing 36 320MB disk drives, its total storage was less than the disk drive in the cheapest PC only six years later. (Image courtesy of The Computer History Museum, www.computerhistory.org) See RAID.
 | Reproduced with permission from Computer Desktop Encyclopedia. Copyright (c) 1981-2009 The Computer Language Company Inc. All rights reserved. |
Additional Resources
- Xinorbis 4.2.4 (Windows)
- Xinorbis is a simple but powerful hard disk analyser. Using a sophisticated mix of graphs, tables, and tree displays, it gives the user a complete overview of the contents of a hard disk or directory. Xinorbis makes it easy to see the structure, contents, file distribution, and file composition of...
- Software downloads 2009-11-29
- CodySafe 1.0.0.100 (Windows)
- CodySafe is a menu utility for portable applications. Turn your USB flash drive to a computer-on-stick. You may add, manage and launch your portable applications with ease and comfort. You can manage documents, multimedia files and pictures. You can keep your disk healthy with Drive Doctor. You will always know...
- Software downloads 2009-11-28
- CD Duplicate Master 1.0.0.1020 (Windows)
- CD Duplicate Master, a powerful CD duplicate utility, is designed to fit for CD duplicate fan's need. It can enables you to extract digital audio tracks from an audio CD into sound files on your hard disk; burn audio CD, data CD to blank CD disc, and data files to...
- Software downloads 2009-11-26
- Smart Defrag 1.30 (Windows)
- Disk fragmentation is generally main cause of slow and unstable computer performance. Smart Defrag helps defragment your hard drive most efficiently. Smart Defrag not only defragments computer deeply but optimizes disk performance. With 'install it and forget it' feature, Smart Defrag works automatically and quietly in the background on your...
- Software downloads 2009-11-25
- SysCheckUp 2.1.1 (Windows)
- SysCheckUp is software designed for Windows systems (32-bit only) to keep your computer running at maximum performance. The innovative repair tool can repair multiple problems including: missing desktop icons, missing taskbar, missing drives, no audio, and denied access to the task manager and control panel. The registry cleaner can remove...
- Software downloads 2009-11-25
- Yep 2.0.6 (Mac)
- Every computer has loads of PDF, Office and iWork files, probably scattered all over your hard disk. Use Yep to search, view, and manage all these documents wherever they lie on your hard drive. Think of Yep as iPhoto for your documents. Yep does not move or change your files...
- Software downloads 2009-11-25
- BCWipe 4.01.1 (Windows)
- BCWipe is an ultimate software product that allows you to delete any unwanted data from your hard drive: files, folders, records, private data, cookies, file slacks, content of the swap file, previously accessed pages on the Internet. Standard operating system's deletion procedures remove only a reference to a file from...
- Software downloads 2009-11-25
- My BootDisk 3.02 (Windows)
- My Boot Disk creates start-up disk with mouse support and dozens of system-repairing utilities, including boot-up fix, file extraction, drive partitioning, rapid installation, disk format, attributes change, file deletion, file copy, and disk scan. It installs Windows faster, troubleshoots varieties of boot or crash problems, and discover potential file damage....
- Software downloads 2009-11-24
- iPhone Explorer 1.182 (Mac)
- Want to put your iPhone or iPod Touch in disk mode? Use an iPhone as a flash drive? iPhone Explorer is an iPhone browser for Mac that lets you browse the files and folders on your iPhone as if it were a normal USB flash drive or pen drive. You...
- Software downloads 2009-11-24
- Is it time to go quad-core?
- Quad core, Chris?You have told us over and over that all you need is Google. You don't need a real OS, real apps, or any processing power to speak of. All you need is a browser, preferably Chrome. Why on Earth would you need a quad core...
- Discussion threads 2009-11-23
- TrueCrypt 6.3a (Windows)
- Protect your sensitive data with this free open-source disk encryption software. Creates a virtual encrypted disk within a file and mount it as a real disk. Encrypt an entire hard disk partition or a device, such as USB flash drive. Automatically and transparently encrypt in real time. TrueCrypt provides...
- Software downloads 2009-11-23
- SoftAmbulance Outlook Recovery 2.3 (Windows)
- Recover and repair deleted, lost and corrupted Microsoft Outlook databases. Outlook Recovery will automatically locate, recover and repair damaged Outlook databases complete with email messages, attachments, address books, and contacts. If an Outlook database has been deleted or lost after a disk or system failure, Outlook Recovery will perform a...
- Software downloads 2009-11-23
- Ocster Backup Pro 3.03 (Windows)
- This is a very easy to use backup software that was designed from the start to work fully automatic: you simply specify what you want backed up and when and then the software takes care of the rest. The backups can be stored either on an external local hard disk,...
- Software downloads 2009-11-22
- Google Chrome OS has arrived as free VMWare download
- Somebody will make it available in a more public area, I'm sure.Being that it's open source, somebody's going to make it available in a more public area, I'm sure. I'll wait until then.RE: Google Chrome OS has arrived as free VMWare downloadthat's not the real release... that's a linux based...
- Discussion threads 2009-11-20
- Sync!Sync!Sync! 4.1.1 (Mac)
- Sync!Sync!Sync!... Do you have backup copy of your data? If your hard disk drive breaks, you can buy apps and musics but you can never buy back original data like documents, photos, emails, etc. Sync!Sync!Sync! helps you to make copies of your data by synchronizing two folders. It's very easy...
- Software downloads 2009-11-20
- FileSalvage 7.0 (Mac)
- FileSalvage is an extremely powerful data recovery tools designed to restore files that have been accidentally deleted, have become unreadable due to media faults, or were stored on a drive before it was re-initialized or formatted. It is device and file system independent, allowing the users to recover files from...
- Software downloads 2009-11-19
- Netbook/notebook reliability study shows that technology breaks ...
- Cheaply made partsWell, look at the parts they all are stampedwith 'Made in CHINA'...Quantity over Quality.People are now geared towards a Wal_Mart mentality they do not want to pay for quality and they do NOT care where it is made.Therefore, you will see a lower standard of living because the...
- Discussion threads 2009-11-18
- Disks: why size means performance
- OK, Smarty pants...How do I use only the outer-most sectors of my 500GB disk?Performance != reliabilitySeagate has progressively gotten worse with reliability - that's why they cut the 5-year warranty back down to 3 years. Western Digital has made great strides with reliability though. WD isn't focussing on...
- Discussion threads 2009-11-18
- ZippyRippy 1.0.6 (Mac)
- ZippyRippy is a new program developed with one goal in mind, ripping DVD media for use on personal devices. ZippyRippy is set apart by the idea that DVD conversion should be automatic without the need to endlessly tweak controls. If a DVD with a valid VIDEO_TS folder is detected when...
- Software downloads 2009-11-18
- Smart Partition Recovery 2.4 (Windows)
- When Explorer does not find a disk, this does not mean that the data has been lost. The data is OK most of the time, but a disk boot sector is damaged. Smart Partition Recovery restores deleted logical disks. In an automatic mode, Smart Partition Recovery will easily allow you...
- Software downloads 2009-11-18
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