How do Hard Disk Drives Work? 💻💿🛠

Take a look at their PCB Assembly, for populating the components on your PCBs.
Have you ever wondered how Hard Disk Drives can store billions of bits of data within the volume of a short, small brick? Thinking about it, it's really truly incredible that a library worth of data, millions of photos, or thousands of videos can be stored in a device that costs less than $100. Data storage has truly evolved to incredible densities over the past 6 decades, and in this video, we're going to see how exactly a Hard Disk Drive stores data, how it reads and writes data, and then the cutting-edge technologies that are continuing to decrease the size of each bit of data.

Table of Contents:
00:00 - Introduction to Hard Disk Drives.
01:00 - Components inside a Hard Disk Drive.
04:42 - Writing to an HDD.
07:40 - Reading from an HDD.
10:11 - Fitting more bits per area.
11:05 - PCBWay Sponsorship
12:12 - Cutting-edge HDD Technology

Key Branches from this video are: How do SSDs Work? || How does DRAM Work?

Erratum: CMR is 'Conventional Magnetic Recording' not 'Classic' Magnetic Recording. CMR is also called PMR 'Perpendicular' Magnetic Recording.

Animation & Modeling: Prakash Kakadiya
Animation: Mike Radjabov
Script: Teddy Tablante
Twitter: @teddytablante
Voice Over: Phil Lee
Music Editor & Mixer: Luis Zuleta
SFX: Raul Raul Nuñez
Sound Supervisor & Editor: Luis Huesca
Founder of Branch Education: Theodore J Tablante

References:

Chen, Ben M. Lee, Tong H. Hard Disk Drive Servo Systems 2nd Edition. Springer, 2006.

Jacob, Bruce. Ng, Spencer W. Wang, David T. Memory Systems, Cache DRAM, Disk. Morgan Kaufmann, 2008.

Wikipedia contributors. "Hard Disk Drives". "Magnetic Storage". "Perpendicular Magnetic Recording". "Shingled Magnetic Recording". "Storage Density". Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, Visited December 2022

#HardDiskDrive #Storage #Computer

[JaredOwen]

I understood the basics before this but this animation went deep! Thanks for the great video 😎

[marcoantonelliani]

It's hard to believe how lucky we are having this content with this level of studies, researches, explanations and animations available for free. Impressive work.

[Ramshackle]

How in the hell did anyone ever come up with this technology and then create it!? The engineering, timing, and precision required is staggering. Amazing videos, thank you.

[BranchEducation]

Thanks, everyone for helping us reach 1M subscribers!!

[blurglide]

Wow- I had no idea bits are recorded as CHANGES in polarity, rather than just a region with a particular polarity. What an absolute marvel of mechanical, electrical, materials, and software engineering. It's crazy these things are so cheap. Very interesting. Thanks

[FezCaliph]

I won't be as disappointed when my new HDD drive slows down over time seeing all that it does in such a short period of time

[SamueldeBrito]

Wow, this video removed a lot of mysteries over HDD for me, and brought a whole new sight over this technology, it's brilliant!!!

[orangetwingo]

I can summarize the video for you: hard drives are made with witchcraft and operated with witchcraft.

[wfufjpx]

This is extremely well written, produced, and animated. As someone who works in the HDD industry, I can vouch for the validity of this information. Something I think is interesting but was not mentioned is multi-actuator drives. For instance, with a 2-actuator design, this would allow for read/write speeds of up to (about) 2x as fast read/write speeds at maximum than previously possible. This is because there can be multiple streams of data read at the same time. Think of tape-based storage medium. This commonly has many read/write heads which is trivial since the storage medium is what needs to be moved rather than the r/w heads. This is a more complex endeavor in HDDs since the head needs to be able to seek accurately and quickly which becomes quite difficult given the limited space within the enclosure. The drive essentially needs two (or more) of the heads in the space which used to be occupied by only one and also another controller for the other actuator.

[todorotox]

Exceptional content. Working for 15 years with different storage vendors - probably the best summarized explanation I have ever seen! Great job, thanks for making it available to such a large audience!

[Itsmarkyoung]

I was a curious kid, and would always ask questions like this, only to be given a general answer or find something on the internet that explained it in a basic way. The level of detail you go into with easy to follow visuals is finally expanding my knowledge on these things and I’m so grateful for your channel! I know what data LOOKS like, I know how it’s transmitted and written on a microscopic level, and I can visualize things like Bluetooth or smoke alarms in ways I’ve never been able to, thank you!!

[NightWear]

I'm a lifer in electrical and understanding not only components but also diagnosis of those components. this video is just icing to me. thanks for the effort! Well made! Much appreciated. for the most part. I love how all components aren't as "scary/mysterious" once we understand the parts.

[yc__]

You are really one of the few channels where I watch the sponsorship because it still is an amazingly animated part to watch.

[OhNotThat]

i'm in hard disk repair and engineering and despite mostly knowing all this, it really was a treat to see it so well described again.

[marian-gabriel]

Could you imagine a world where we would get this high standard of education in all schools?!?! Thank you very much, Branch Education! What an awesome job you guys are doing!

[AuraAcorn]

I love how deep the animation got! So in depth and high quality, and makes the topic a simple visualization that I can now explain to clients and computer enthusiasts!

[pmgodfrey]

I've known how hard drives work for a long time, but this animation is amazing. No fluff, just facts.

[nicolasayastuy]

This channel has to be protected by law. It's bloody amazing. You got no idea how I wish my education had been like this.

[karlomyduck]

In modern hard drives there is also a micro-actuator made up of 2 small piezoelectric plates on each side which help read write heads to be even more precise. Truly magnificent stuff!

[ashkanaref]

Bro made sure no one will ever beats his quality level of content creation