Hard Drive Physical Components
The hard drive itself consists of two main parts.
The mechanical part including the heads and disk assembly.
The PCB electronic board.
As these parts are physical they can be subject to failure and result in the need for hard drive data recovery.
The PCB is made from different components, each chip, resistor, fuse etc all have their own tasks and duties. Later in the week we will discuss the PCB more in depth. At this stage you should be aware that as this is the electronic circuitry of the hard drive it is subject to electrical failures.
Inside the hard drive we can see many more physical components. See fig 1 for the view inside a hard drive.
Fig 1
The internal parts of the HDA (Hard Drive Assembly) are all mechanical and subject to mechanical failure.
How can these components fail? Wear and tear is common with any moving component; the platters themselves spin at a fast rate approx 7,200 RPM in a desktop hard drive. Motors can fail the heads can come off or become damaged as a result of dropping the hard drive. The heads can even fail due to mishandling and receiving electrostatic charge from a human via its PCB.
The hard drive is a piece of specialist hardware that should be handled with care, using all the precautions you can prevent many human caused problems.
Hard drives can also suffer serious damage from excess heat; this is something that can be prevented by the user, after all prevention is better than cure.
Common mechanical failures.
* Dust enters the hard drive assembly; this will affect the heads and / or platters.
* Dropping, knocking or shocking the hard drive whilst in use or turned off.
* Power surge or lightning.
* General wear and tear as each part wears over time.
If you ever suspect your drive is failing mechanically, please shut down the machine and contact us.
