This Week’s Word: Hard Drive

Okay, I’m a bit belated with these week’s word– my apologies! Today, I’ll be writing about hard drives, sure, that’s two words, but it makes a nice contrast to last week’s article on memory. You already know what memory is and you probably have a pretty good idea what a hard drive is. Let’s run through some hard drive basics together and hopefully I can fill in some gaps in your knowledge, or at least review this information with you.

The first thing you want to know about your hard drive is whether it is internal or external. All computers, for the purpose of this article, have an internal hard drive. An icon for it probably appears on your desktop. It’s typically named “Macintosh HD”. This is likely where your operating system and all of your data are stored. You may have an external hard drive as well. For example, this could be a Time Capsule. Or a Rocstor plugged in to your computer. An external hard drive is a common way to backup your computer. An external hard drive, especially a small USB or firewire one like Rocstor and Western Digital make, can also be used to transport lots of information from computer to computer. Or you may have seen our technicians hook one up to your computer for diagnostic purposes.

You can also also access another computer’s hard drive while it is still in the machine, if you start the computer up in something called “target disk mode”. To do this, hold down the “T” key while booting up the machine from which you need to access the hard drive. Now, attach a firewire cord to both machines. This machine’s hard drive should come up under “Devices”. You can do this if you need to access files and are having some issues with the machine’s operating system.

Any hard drives you have hooked up to your computer will come up in Finder on the left side under “Devices” and “Shared”. Anything hooked up individually, such as your own internal hard drive or something plugged in via USB or firewire will show up under “Devices”, whereas something that multiple machines can access, such as a Time Machine connected over Wifi, will be considered “Shared”. To get information on a “device”, simply right-click on it and select “Get Info”.

Hard drives come in lots of varieties beyond internal and external, but the average user won’t need to get into all these details. However, if you are buying a portable Mac, you now have the option of purchasing it with a “Solid State Drive”. A SSD is an alternative to the traditional hard drive and it’s advantage is that it has no moving parts. This means that it is less likely to fail, or get damaged. With a traditional hard drive, it can be damaged from being bumped around, especially while in use. The SSD will also be faster than a traditional hard drive. The disadvantage of a solid state drive is that they currently only come in much smaller sizes and they have a much heftier price tag.

That’s this week’s quick run down on hard drives. As always, feel free to comment with any questions.

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