How is actual data space created?

[ashmo]

Trying to work it out, every hard drive is the same physical size give or take a few mm but the data space within in can vary, how is it "created" is it down to binary size of something? Just baffling me Laughing

 

[andicole0]

In essence they make the font smaller for the 1's and 0's.

The bigger the drive in terms of data the smaller the 'space' available for a 1 or a 0. What this means is the the mechanical device used to read each one or zero has to be increasingly more accurate and hence expensive.

Andi.

 

[Greboth]

The other common way is for manufacturers to add platters, if a single platter stores 500Gb then if they want a 1000Gb drive, either make a higher density platter as above or put 2 500Gb platters together. Though I believe it is still true that the fewer platters the better.

 

[rpstewart]

Indeed less platters means less heat but also fewer platters mean higher data density for a given size and that means more data passes under the heads per revolution hence the sustained data rate is higher. The downside is that as the blocks become smaller the head accuracy has to be incredibly high which can lead to slower random access times.

To put it into perspective if you wanted to mimic what a hard disk is capable of you'd need to fly a plane at ~30000mph about 6 feet above the ground and count every blade of grass you passed. Quite an incredible feat of engineering when you think about it.

 

[Dervious]

To put it into perspective if you wanted to mimic what a hard disk is capable of you'd need to fly a plane at ~30000mph about 6 feet above the ground and count every blade of grass you passed. Quite an incredible feat of engineering when you think about it.

Absolutely.

Hard drives are just as "mind blowing" as CPUs. How the heads can accurately locate and read millions of bits per second is quite amazing.