What do the magnets in a hard drive do?
In: Technology
Hard drives store data as magnetic patterns on the surface of a metallic disc. The magnets on the heads of the drive arms read and write those magnetic patterns and the disc spins beneath them. Its a little bit like an old record player, where the needle on the arm reads the pattern on the record. Expect the arm has magnets instead of a needle, and record spins a LOT faster, and the arm does not physically touch the disc.
this only applies to traditional HDD drives – newer SSD (solid state drives) do not use magnets or moving parts
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