Why would it be described like that? It’s not like SSDs or optical media are particularly soft.
In: Technology
Hard disk drives are hard when compared to floppy drives.
Of course the floppy drives most people remember will be the 3 and 1⁄2-inch floppy disk which were encased in hard plastic.
However the older 5 and 1⁄4 inch discs and even older 8 inch ones were indeed floppy and able to bend flex.
In general it has little to do with the drives as you handle them but the disks insides. Floppys and similar had flexible disks while HDDs have hard platters inside them.
If you ever opened up an old HDD you will have ended up with a broken drive and a cool magnet to play around with, but also some hard silvery looking disk that were stacked one over the other other inside the drive. These platters are what is meant when they say ‘hard’ compared to the floppy disc that you get when opening up the protective sleeve of a floppy disc.
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