Hard drive physics

Tannin

Storage? I am Storage!
Joined
Jan 15, 2002
Messages
4,448
Location
Huon Valley, Tasmania
Website
www.redhill.net.au
Dear Redhill.

I am a student at Bungay High School, and I am currently writing a project on the physics of hard drives. I have found your site very helpful in telling me how they have developed over the years, but I was wondering if you could please explain to me, or direct me to someone who could, how they work on an atomic scale. I would be most grateful if you could tell me about the charging of the plates and why the charges stay in place.

Any information would be greatly received. Many thanks.

Joseph

-------------------

I replied:

You are very welcome to use any information you can glean from the Red Hill site, though I doubt there is a great deal that's relevant to your project here. IBM used to have some interesting stuff of the physics of magnetic recording (their top page is www.storage.ibm.com - dig down from there). Also, you might find a little at the component manufacturers' sites - check the links to Read-Rite and Komag in our hard drive guide.

I'm going to repost your query at my favourite hangout, the Storage Forum. I'm not sure what the guys there will have to contribute (these days we seem to spend a lot of time talking about everything except storage!) but it might be worth watching the thread.


----------------------

Why do the charges stay in place. OK, it's "just" ordinary magnetism but, now that Joseph raises the question, I discover that I know damn-all about it. I'm going to look into this, trawl around and see what I can learn, post the results here.

I know, for example, that there have been at least three major hard drive magnetic recording technologies: ferrite (up to about 20MB days), thin-film (up to about 4GB) and then the various permutations of MR, and follow (more or less) the difference between MR and thin-film, but I don't know nearly enough about these things.

Kick in your links, guys, and let's see what we can come up with.
 

CityK

Storage Freak Apprentice
Joined
Sep 2, 2002
Messages
1,719
This Seagate article may provide a start.

Also, a Google search using the term "magnetoresistive" may prove helpful.
 
Top