CompTIA A+® Certification All-In-One For Dummies®, 2nd Edition

5.1. Understanding Hard Drive Terminology

If you took a martial arts class, the instructor would show you how to do some basic punches and kicks before letting you spar or compete. The instructor would be well aware that jumping into combat without the basics could do you more damage than good. PC repair works the same way: Before discussing the installation and configuration of IDE and SCSI devices, it is important to cover some basic terminology surrounding hard drives.

5.1.1. Disk geometry

The following sections introduce you to disk geometry — essentially the physical components of a drive that make up your data storage solution. You also find out some general terminology about hard drives and hard drive storage in this section.

5.1.1.1. Platters

A platter is a physical object (actually, a plate) inside the hard disk that is responsible for storing the data. A platter is similar to a music record (LP and ' 45 vinyl discs — remember those?), and a hard disk has many platters. Figure 5-1 shows the platters inside a hard disk.

Figure 5.1. The internals of a hard disk.

The platters are similar to records on a record player in the sense that they spin on a spindle that runs through the center of all the platters. Each platter has two sides for storing information, and each side of the platter has a unique ID. The ID for the first side of the first platter is 0, and each side ...