SATA Hard Drive – SATA Internal Hard Drive https://www.satainternalharddrive.net Mon, 27 Aug 2012 09:21:45 +0000 en-US hourly 1 Hard drive https://www.satainternalharddrive.net/hard-drive/ Mon, 31 Jan 2011 12:07:31 +0000 http://www.satainternalharddrive.net/?p=26
IBM 305 RAMAC

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A hard drive is a input-output device, which is used for storage of different data, stored on it in form of files. Today, a hard drive is a part of every computer, desktop PC or laptop, and it is also built in various other electronic devices, like USB drive, portable mp3 or mp4 player, digital camera and other devices we can’t imagine our life without anymore.

The essential parts of every hard drive are: round plates, mechanism for rotating discs, read-write heads, mechanism for moving them and a controller. Data, which are stored on a hard drive, are written on a magnetic layer, which is placed on round plates, usually made of aluminum. When we want to access our data, read/write heads are activated and they access wanted part of a disc where our information is. Round circles are rotating with constant speed up to 15000 rotates per minute. They rotate around their axis, and read head reads written data from height of few nanometers and sends them to the computer. The process of writing data is similar, just in the opposite direction, instead of read, write head is activated.

If we compare modern drives to the first ones we can see that technology has significantly advanced. The first hard drive was made in the year 1956 by the company IBM and it was called IBM 305 RAMAC. It was significantly bigger than modern drives and also very expensive. Considering the inflation, today the price for it would be 150000 dollars, and it wouldn’t fit in any housing of desktop PC. The complete computer system, where the first hard drive was built in, took place of one whole room.

Modern hard drives are way better than his precursors in all specifications. They are significantly cheaper and affordable to more people. The capacity of modern hard drives is not comparable to the one of the older drives, known around year 1960. The capacity is measured in gigabytes (GB), and modern drives easily store more than 1000 GB of data. Also data access time is much shorter, but the main difference is size. Today we find hard drives almost everywhere and we don’t need a whole room for a computer anymore.

Like all electronic accessories also hard drives are not immune to different damages. Read head, which reads data from height of around 20 nanometers, can be confused already by smallest damage and it results in inability to read data, and the impact can cause head to hit the magnetic surface and cause even more damage and data loss. Damages in this area can be results of impacts (in case you drop a drive off your hand), damages because of the age of the drive, sudden cut of power, malfunction in electronics, corrosion or low quality of production of heads or plates. The problem of these damages is that they are not repairable. When you get the damage, data is lost and you usually can’t restore it, and a hard drive is not usable anymore.

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]]> SATA Hard Drive https://www.satainternalharddrive.net/sata-hard-drive/ Mon, 04 Oct 2010 15:25:35 +0000 http://www.satainternalharddrive.net/?p=19
Photo of SATA ports on a motherboard

Image via Wikipedia

Serial Advanced Technology Attachment which is also known as SATA is a computer device that is used to connect adapters to devices into which huge amount of information can be stored, for example- hard drives and optical drives. ATA has been replaced with SATA which works at higher speed but used low-level instructions like the former. It uses four conductors in contrast to the 16 conductors used by ATA. SATA has the following advantages: use of cable wires are reduced which also reduces the cost and information is transferred more efficiently. Modern laptops use the host adapter of SATA. It is also used in the motherboards of desktop computers.

How to Install SATA Hard drives:

SATA hard drives are quite easy to install. Settings of jumpers or terminators are not necessary for roper operation. The drive can be forced into the SATA 150MB/s by using the jumper block near the connector on 300MB/s. Each hard drive has their own cable which connects to the host adapter or on the SATA port of the desktop motherboard. In contrast to PATA master-slave relationship does not exist. SATA drive and PATA drive can be used simultaneously provided both are supported in the system. Without removing the PATA disk drives, SATA compatibility can be easily added to the system.

One must check the computer system to see whether the motherboard supports SATA and should also locate the connector. IF there is no SATA connector, a host adapter needs to be purchased. It should be compatible with the system and should be installed.

Precautions: Disk drives should be handled carefully as they are fragile. One should hold the drives only by its edges and should be kept in a protective container in order to minimize damage. Power of the system should be turned off during installation. Disassembling of the drive voids the warranty.

Installing the Drive: The cable of the SATA connector should be attached to the host adapter. Then the interface and cables should be attached to the drive. Fix the drive using screws on each side. In the bottom-mounting holes screws should be inserted not more than 0.20 inches and on the side-mounting holes screws should not be inserted more than 0.14 inches. Over tightening of the screws may lead to damage of the drive.

Detection of the new drive might be automatically done by the computer system when it is restarted. If it does not detect the new drive, the following steps should be taken.

When the computer restarts, instruct the system setup program to detect the new drive automatically. Save and exit from the setup. The system should recognize the new drive when it restarts. Check about SATA Internal Hard Drive.

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