A hard drive is basically a storage device that uses circular magnetic disks for storing digital data. Actually there is plenty of confusion over the terms hard disk and hard drive and very often they are used interchangeably. The confusion is there probably because earlier both the hard disk and the hard drive came as separate components just like we have DVD and DVD drives.

But now, both the hard drive and the hard disk are sealed together as a single unit and this is why they are now technically referred to as Hard Disk Drives (HDD). The term ‘hard drive’ has however become more popular obviously because it is easier to pronounce. So, if anyone mentions hard drive, always remember that what he or she is basically referring to is a Hard Disk Drive.

Hard drives are being used extensively and if you look around your home, you will notice that you are virtually surrounded by them. The most likely places where you will find a hard drive include everything from computers and notebooks to gaming consoles, digital audio/video players, digital cameras, digital video recorders, personal digital assistants (PDAs) and many more. You cannot see them directly in most of these, but you can be sure that they are there and are working continuously for you behind the scenes.

The earliest of hard drives just had around 2 MB of storage space, but things have changed dramatically over the years and now you can easily get hard drives of over 1000 GB, if that is you need so much storage space. The speed has also increased over the years and now you can get super fast hard drives that rotate at 7200 rpm. The more the rotating speed, the less time it takes to access data stored on the hard drive.

If you want, you can also opt for external hard drives that you can use for backing up your important files and folders. You can also use it for archiving all your favorite movies, TV serials, home videos, and songs.

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