Hard Disk Drive Parts (what's inside)

The Four Major Components of a Hard Disk Drive:

Platters are the circular discs inside the hard drive where the 1s and 0s that make up your files are stored.

Spindle keeps the platters in position and rotates them as required

Read/Write Arm controls the movement of the read/write heads, which do the actual reading and writing on the disk platters by converting the magnetic surface into an electric current.

Actuator or head actuator is a small motor that takes instructions from the drive's circuit board to control the movement of the read/write arm and supervise the transfer of data to and from the platters. It's responsible for ensuring the read/write heads are in exactly the right place at all times.

Other Components:
As well as the casing on the outside of the hard disk that holds all of the components together, the front-end circuit board controls input and output signals in tandem with the ports at the end of the drive. No matter what the type of drive, it has one port for a power supply and one port for transferring data and instructions to and from the rest of the system