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Inside of a Hard Drive

youtube.com — A video of what a Hard Drive looks like inside while doing various tasks.

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  • JavertHolmes, on 10/12/2007, -1/+57Parts of a defrag would have been interesting to see as well. Nice video.
    • Monolith2, on 10/12/2007, -54/+4How many times will a video of a hard drive without its cover make the front page of Digg? 10? 20? 1000?
    • vbsurfer, on 10/12/2007, -43/+4this is digg.com. I guess its not such a tech site after all.

      We don't know what hard drives do.
    • julielacombe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Definitely. the seek pattern would probably look quite random.

      After seeing that head go wild, I'm not really surprised about how people keep reporting that their hard drive go dead.. Speaking of dead Hard Drive, this reminds me of an article about freezing Hard Drives to recover data.. here'S the link: http://geeksaresexy.blogspot.com/2006/01/freeze-your-hard-drive-to-recover-data.html
  • orbital2012, on 10/12/2007, -1/+36That is one old-ass drive.
    • killerofkiller, on 10/12/2007, -0/+26i did that once.. then took a sharipe to it and made crazy wall art
    • dbacks714, on 10/12/2007, -39/+5or one old ass-drive
    • Zippo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+23Obviously it was old... would you open up and use a new one?
    • ufia, on 10/12/2007, -2/+25I always open my new hard drives to cool down the data.
    • TJ09, on 10/12/2007, -0/+27If you look at the beginning, the label on the top says it's a "Samsung WU32543A," which I found, after some quick Googling, is a 2.54 GB hard drive from around 1997
    • orbital2012, on 10/12/2007, -6/+4Zippo: You call that a hard drive? The head on a newer 7200rpm drive probably reads faster and would make for a more impressive YouTube video, let alone Digg submission. God that thing is loud. Ghetto.
    • orbital2012, on 10/12/2007, -8/+1I wouldn't post a video of obsolete hardware.
  • neoknight, on 10/12/2007, -48/+5I wonder what it does when Windows crashes? Does the thing (the reader needle thingy) get off the hard drive in some way?
    • DaffyDuck, on 10/12/2007, -3/+39"Does the thing (the reader needle thingy) get off the hard drive in some way?"

      No. The hard drive would suffer permanent damage in such an event. Windows crashes are different than hard drive crashes.
    • killerofkiller, on 10/12/2007, -29/+6u mean the head?
    • Namco, on 10/12/2007, -5/+12A magnet parks the head automatically at the end of the disk.
  • xyqxyq, on 10/12/2007, -13/+62Could he be any more ghetto; using a small paper sign with his website on it?
    • gcnaddict, on 10/12/2007, -6/+35Not everyone knows how to use Windows Movie Maker or Adobe Premier.
    • CosmicJustice, on 10/12/2007, -2/+31Sure, he could just sit back and bitch about what other people are doing on their websites.
    • mikewitt, on 10/12/2007, -2/+21I agree. He was able to make labels of "Copy and Paste" "Deleting a Folder" Etc..., but not able to put in a plug for his site?
    • ephemere, on 10/12/2007, -1/+15I thought the same thing, but we all noticed it, right? Mission accomplished...
    • Vwise, on 10/12/2007, -0/+28having his sign physically in the video might be a way to show that it was really him who made it and not someone editing over his into.
  • DontFretBrett, on 10/12/2007, -4/+35his little paper plug for his website reminded me of the napleon intro
  • Namco, on 10/12/2007, -2/+57On a Quick Format, he says "notice the quick swipe of the head" as if the write head just overwrote the entire disk. What actually happened is the drive went to the edge and simply overwrote the File Allocation Table. But other than that, pretty cool video.
  • levig, on 10/12/2007, -27/+6I don't think the "rapid swipe of the head" in the quick format portion of the video has anything to do with fomatting the disk. Quick formatting I'm pretty sure just erases the master boot record, which should be in the first sectors of the drive in the center, towards the hub. The rapid swipe was just getting the head over the MBR.
    • gcnaddict, on 10/12/2007, -2/+35Erases the master boot record? Holy *****, we'd all be screwed if every quick format did that.
  • stoops, on 10/12/2007, -0/+18So here's some questions, how is the head (or the "needle") making that ticking sound? Is it physically touching the disk or if it never touches the disk, how does losing power ruin some hard drives?
    • Namco, on 10/12/2007, -0/+32The movement of the armature is the clicking noise, not the read/write process.
    • DaffyDuck, on 10/12/2007, -0/+19Older hard drives had that problem because they were not auto-parking. When power is lost they lost the small air gap between the head and platter and the head ends up scratching the disc and possibly damaging the head as well. The clicking sounds are just due to the very rapid movements.
    • dgh1973, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Losing power in an of itself doesn't ruin hard drives. It may cause data corruption, but reformat or replace the corrupted data and you are good, the drive itself is fine. Just like the video showed, powering off a drive will simply park the heads. I imagine ripping out the molex power connector in mid operation would have the same effect, probably nothing a checkdisk or fsck couldn't fix but that's all related to the data.

      Power surges, drops on hard surfaces, exposure to extreme magnetic fields... these things will ruin a hard drive and each one for different reasons (or basically, ruin different functions/parts of the drive potentially).
    • E1M1, on 10/12/2007, -0/+27The arm actuator can make more than just ticking sounds: http://youtube.com/watch?v=8GT2WrsCDmI !
    • crash331, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2The clicking sounds are little burst of electricity that change the magnetic orientation of the bits on the platter.
  • AmishRefugee, on 10/12/2007, -2/+31"MAGIC I TELL YOU" -someone on youtube
  • dgh1973, on 10/12/2007, -15/+3Interesting to a point, but didn't all the geeks out there already know what this was going to look like? And all the non geeks are probably snoring right now.

    Really, read some basic books on HD architecture and this video is no surprise at all.
    • dignation, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13It is still very interesting watching the actual hard drive doing work, instead of trying to imagine it while watching a book.
  • nazsco, on 10/12/2007, -14/+1the "copy/past" scream *****
    • dgh1973, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Not really, he was probably copying a fair amount of data off of the drive so he could format it. Doing that to a different drive/partition with a fair amount of data is a lot different than doing it within the same drive/partition - in that case only the tables change and it takes less than a second, otherwise all of the data has to be read and then transferred. Try it some time and not the difference in disk activity.
    • Klinky, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1If you're copying data from one folder to another on the same disk then it will indeed physically copy the data, this takes more than a few seconds & takes longer than copying from one physical(not a partition) drive to another. If you're moving data on the same disk, then only the table needs to be changed, it is very quick. If you're moving data from one disk to another then it's akin to copying all the data to the target disk & then deleting from the source.
  • turbodigg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+21Wouldnt that harddrive be screwed? Now that its been exposed to dust?
    • exabytes18, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10Shhhhh..... Part 2 of the video is what a hard drive looks like when the head crashes.

      Haha, that would be more exciting.
    • dgh1973, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Yeah, it definitely will be more prone to failure in the future I would think. Not to mention he voided the warranty.
    • alrahman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Thats what I thought, but apparently not.
    • chicken101, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Yes, it would be, which is why the case of a hard drive is glued and screwed in place. That hard drive is probably ruined.
    • jsreid, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6he said in the description on youtube that it was an old hard drive, so i am sure he doesnt care about it.
    • combatchuck, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9It's probably an old hard drive that he was going to trash anyway.
    • krasht, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3The heads and the platter don't touch and they are so close that even smoke particles are enough to make them "touch". So, the drive is most likely screwed.
  • justcallmejim, on 10/12/2007, -25/+2I suppose it might be interesting if you had no idea how a hard drive worked in the first place. If this gets a lot of diggs I'll know where the digg crowd falls.

    What would be interesting to see is the effects of turning NCQ on and off. But then again it's nothing that a good benchmark wouldn't tell you.
    • Zanneth, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13We all know what happens when we mix two dangerous chemicals together. A huge explosion! Wouldn't it be cool to see a video of it?
    • TJ09, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10I know how a hard drive works, but there's a difference between reading about something and seeing parts of it happen.
  • JimXugle, on 10/12/2007, -10/+1What would it look like when you installed linux on an open drive like this?
    • Linkage155, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7The same way it would look like if you installed windows..
    • fr34k5h0w, on 10/12/2007, -0/+15it'd probably put the data in the shape of a penguin /sarc
  • Urusai, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3That drive sure loves the outer cylinder. I'd guess either the drive hot-parks out there, FAT is located there, or a journal is located there. It's grossly inefficient. I think NTFS puts its metadata in the middle, implying this is DOS. It didn't seem to be caching much, either (old drive, old OS?).
  • djliquidice, on 10/12/2007, -15/+0Opened drives don't last very long. This site dissapoints me daily w/ their low # of diggs making the front page. Hell, the "Front page" is ignored by some people because of the lack of "really good" content.
  • Dustyb, on 10/12/2007, -0/+15Cool footage. Now what would really be cool would be to see this under high speed camera.
    • lunchbox170, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Yeah that would be neat, seeing the needle in slow motion. That would be awesome!
  • tekmonkey, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Create a windowd hard drive:
    http://case-mod-nexus.com/linear/hard-drive-window-2/
  • TheTrueAPlus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Where is defragment. That would be crazy head movement.
  • scottschiller, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Deleting a directory in DOS/win9X was super-slow under normal circumstances, as the FAT would be updated for each file deleted (as each file was removed) from what I recall. The bit of the video showing deletion of files is just like I remember it sounding on my old computer.

    With MS' "Smartdrive" (smartdrv.exe) running, the FAT would only be modified once after deleting the files - so not only would deleting many files be faster, there would be considerably less noise given the read/write head didn't have to move between wherever the files were on the disk, and the FAT for each file.

    (I could be completely wrong on the above, but this is what I remember - correct me if I'm mistaken.)

    While this was somewhat educational, I really enjoyed this other related video: A bunch of hard disk platters being let loose while spinning, running across the floor and going airborne, nearly hitting the ceiling! (Apparently made by a bored IT department.)

    http://youtube.com/watch?v=yISqCAnROh8&mode=related&search=
  • sensia3, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUQzGIqp4t8 check this oen out too
  • tektalk, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1How did he get the special screw driver to open the harddrive?
    • Zippo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Special screwdriver? You mean a regular Phillips?
    • targetX, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1There's no such thing as a special screwdriver, just use a normal screwdriver. If that doesn't work then use a drill to remove the screw...
    • DaffyDuck, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Actually, many of them use torx type screws. The advantage of torx is that they are harder to strip out (cam out). Some people assume they use these type of screws to prevent people from opening the hard-drive but really, torx screwdrivers can be purchased at most hardware stores. It's just that most people don't happen to have a set of torx screwdrivers.
    • Markie1006, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Not sure if they're still the same, but 'back in the day', if you ever wanted to do anything on a Compaq, you really needed your Torx15 with you.
  • superdoug, on 10/12/2007, -3/+0this guy does not have much on his hard drive
  • someWayne, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0That was interesting, although I think that modern hard drives will park the reading arm away from the disk to prevent any possible damage if you are to move the hard drive around.
  • PowerCow, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I have done this.. after watching a simular vid.. i have several hds in various states of deconstruction.
    The magnets that control the arm are cool and wicked powerful... they can hurt bad if they snap together, pinching skin
  • moonwell, on 10/12/2007, -10/+2More than 1000 diggs, how pathetic. Whats up kids never seen hdd before or what? I love those assheads who don't even know what hdd is but they have PhD in computer programming, ***** them.
    • AngryBoy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Who do you know that has a PhD in computer programming?

      I'm guessing that anyone claiming to have a PhD in computer programming doesn't know what a hard drive is because they're full of *****. They're probably like, 12 year old kids that have no idea what they're talking about. I bet they also go around insulting other people they think aren't as l33t as they are. They're "assheads" alright.
    • Zanneth, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3@ moonwell

      Okay, thank you for pointing out that you already know what it looks like inside of a hard drive. Let's give a chance to those who haven't yet, okay?
  • bbdj, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0The Mozy blog has a great (although tongue-in-cheek funny) blog entry on defragging a hard drive. It has an image of a hard drive cut by what looks like an industrial saw.

    http://mozy.com/blog/2006/06/13/defrag-the-mozy-way
  • Thex1138, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Samsung and Fujitsu drives were always the noisiest...Seagate and Maxtor always had quieter drives...After working with hardware for a while you get to know the brands from just the sound of the hard drive heads..
  • oliviacond, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0oic. now I know what is the weird voice comes from. thanks for the video.
  • kenmantx, on 10/12/2007, -5/+0Goddamn this is lame, what's next, a Digg'd vid of paint drying??
  • u8myfoood, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3if he had shown defragmenting, that would have been at least a 10 minute video...
  • mapkinase, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2No voiceover - +
    Static camera - +
    Focused content - +
    Brief - +

    This guy is future Robert Bresson.
  • ummagummas08, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I thought this was an interesting video, I mean I've never seen that.
  • vaxguru, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I always wanted to know what made that crunching/grinding noise. Brilliant stuff =D
  • digitallysick, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1torx screw drivers are your friend
  • amosshapira, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I wonder which OS and filesystem this demonstrate. The directory delete looks a bit inefficient with all this jumping around. As far as I remember BSD 4.2's filesystem already tried to address such redundant movements by clustering related blocks together (even at the price of moving blocks around when deemed worthy).
    • stripes, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1BSD4.2's UFS (aka FFS) will only move "fragments". In UFS a fragment is NOT every time there is a gap in data blocks (which is the more tipical definition, but I guess it wasn't when UFS was invented). In UFS a fragment is the "less then a full block of data at the end of a file" (normally UFS can allocate 1/4 or 1/8th blocks for the data at the trailing end of a file). Appending to a file ending in a fragment can force the fragment to move since there may not be space in that block for more data (since fragments from different files can share a block AND UFS is only allowed to have a fragment at the end of a file).

      UFSs fragments are pretty cool, it let UFS get disk space usage the same as the SysV FS it replaced (which used 512 byte blocks), but still use "huge" 4K blocks. The speed hit was minimal, pretty much zero if you used stdio, and even if not, low for most workloads.

      No longer "state of the art", but it once was. And FFS+checkpoints is still pretty good 20 some years later.
  • narduk, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1that quick format was faster than i expected
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