Drives
Your Macintosh computer needs a place to store files, the operating system, and applications when the power is off. RAM loses power along with the rest of the computer, so it can't store that information. That is the role of a disk drive.
A disk drive records and reads data on a spinning platter. There are essentially two basic types of disk drives: magnetic and optical. Both types have pros and cons.
NOTE
Traditionally, the media used in optical drives are called discs, whereas the media used in magnetic drives are called disks.
Magnetic Drives
Hard disks and removable media (such as floppy disks or Iomega Zip disks) have at least one thing in common: Data is stored on them using magnetism. We'll focus on hard disk drives, but the principles ...
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