The purpose of this article is to provide just the right

balance of technical detail to convey a good insight into

the innards of a hard disk drive and how if basically
works without burdening the reader with excessive
technical detail.

HARD DISK ASSEMBLY. A hard disk drive consists of

a motor, spindle, platters, read/write heads, actuator,
frame, air filter, and electronics. The frame mounts the mechanical parts of the
drive and is sealed with a cover. The sealed part of the drive is known as the
Hard Disk Assembly or HDA. The drive electronics usually consists of one or
more printed circuit boards mounted on the bottom of the HDA.

A head and platter can be visualized as being similar to a record and playback
head on an old phonograph, except the data structure of a hard disk is arranged
into concentric circles instead of in a spiral as it on a phonograph record (and
CD-ROM). A hard disk has one or more platters and each platter usually has a
head on each of its sides. The platters in modern drives are made from glass or
ceramic to avoid the unfavorable thermal characteristics of the aluminum platters
found in older drives. A layer of magnetic material is deposited/sputtered on the
surface of the platters and those in most of the drives I've dissected have shiny,
chrome-like surfaces. The platters are mounted on the spindle which is turned
by the drive motor. Most current IDE hard disk drives spin at 5,400, 7,200, or
10,000 RPM and 15,000 RPM drives are emerging.

HARD DISK DRIVE GUIDE

How a Hard Disk Drive Works
Heads
Last updated: 2/27/2005

HEADS. The heads (or Winchester sliders) are spring-loaded airfoils and
actually fly like an airplane above (or below) the surface of the platters at a
distance measured in micro-inches. The air stream though which a head "fly" is
caused by the motion of the platters spinning through the air inside the HDA.
The platters drag the air along by friction. The higher pressure air between the
heads and the platters is known as air bearing. The effect is somewhat like a
puck in an air hockey game. The bottom of a head is called an air bearing
surface. This sort of mechanism was introduced in the Winchester hard disk
drive invented by IBM in 1973.

The heads are extremely small electromagnets (about 1 mm square) and one is
shown schematically to the right (for a prettier and more detailed picture with
separate read and write elements, click here). Information is stored on the
platters by sending pulses of current from the drive electronics to the head. The
 direction of the current and thus the direction of the diverging
magnetic field across the gap in the head determines the direction the
magnetic domains (little bitty, molecular magnets) on a particular spot
on the platter's magnetic coating, and, thus, whether the spot
represents a binary one or zero. The domains essentially retain their
directional bent (whether the computer is on or off) until "told" to do otherwise by
the drive electronics, which take their orders from the rest of the computer and
ultimately from software. The complexity of the mechanisms and methods
associated with doing all of this will be omitted here.

The heads are bonded to a metal suspension (or head arm), which is a small arm
that holds the head in position above or beneath a disk. A head and suspension
is called a head-gimbal assembly or HGA. The HGA's are stacked together Into a
head-stack assembly, which is propelled across the disk surface by the
actuator. The actuator on most recent hard disks employs a voice coil
mechanism. It functions much like the voice coil in a loud speaker, thus its
name. It consists of a curved magnet (or magnets--very strong ones) and a
spring-loaded coil of fine wire which is attached to the read/write heads by head
arms. The head arms are attached to, and pivot about an actuator shaft. When
the drive electronics apply an electric current to the actuator coil, it interacts with
the magnet and swings against the actuator spring. The heads rotate around the
actuator shaft in the opposite direction of the coil movement, inward and outward
from the center to the edges of the platters. If there is a power outage (e.g., you
turn-off the computer) the spring, which counterbalances the electromagnetic
force between the coil and magnet, takes over and automatically parks (lands
them on skids or nanosliders--like pontoons on a sea plane) and locks the heads
on a part of the platters called a landing zone (like an airport runway only curved)
before they can crash (like an airplane) on, and mar that part of the surface of the
platters where data is stored. When power is restored, the platters speed-up and
the heads take off (like a tethered model airplane, except the ground moves--and
those on the bottoms of the platters can fly up-side-down) and start flying again--
an extraordinary mechanism...

One no longer has to park a hard disk before moving the computer
as was the case in times of old when actuators were moved by
devices known as stepper motors. However, if the power jitters
repeatedly or the drive is subjected whack from a frustrated user, a
crash can occur.

HARD DISK DRIVE GUIDE

How a Hard Disk Drive Works
Servo-Formatting
Last updated: 2/5/2002
 SERVO-FORMATTING. Try to visualize a thin, hollow
cylinder passing through all of the platters in a hard disk
drive. It would produce a circular track on each side of
each platter. Now divide each tack into equal arcs or
sectors. Well, that is exactly how a hard disk is
organized. That is, Cylinders, Heads (which are equal
the number of tracks/cylinder or platter sides), and
Sectors are the coordinates of the data on a hard disk
drive.

There are two kinds of sectors on a hard disk. The first

and at the very lowest level is the servo sector. When a
hard disk is manufactured a special pattern is written in a code called a Gray
code on the surface of the platters, while the drive is open in a clean room,
with an expensive machine called a servowriter. 000
001
A Gray Code is a binary code in which successive numbers differ 011
by only a single bit. Although many Gray Codes are possible, one
specific Gray Code is considered the Gray Code because of its 010
efficiency in computation. This efficiency is why it is used for the 110
servo pattern instead of other binary codes. A three-bit Gray Code
is shown to the right. 111
101
Although there are other schemes, the Gray Code is written in a wedge at 100
the start of each sector (an embedded servo pattern) on most drives. There
are a fixed number of servo sectors per track and the sectors are adjacent to one
another. This pattern is permanent and cannot be changed by writing normal
data to the drive. It also cannot be changed by low-level formatting (see below)
the drive, as some may think. If it is changed, the drive has had it--kaput!

The electronics use feedback from the heads, which read the Gray code pattern,
to very accurately position, and constantly correct the radial position of the
appropriate head over the desired track, at the beginning of each sector, to
compensate for variations in platter geometry, caused by mechanical stress and
thermo expansion and contraction. Altogether, the head positioning components
form what is know as closed-loop servo system--a marvelous (and, perhaps,
dangerous) thing to watch operate in a drive which has been opened.