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Questions tagged [hard-drive]

A hard disk drive (or HDD) is a non-volatile, random access device for storing digital data.

A hard disk drive (HDD, often just called "hard drive") is a data storage device used for storing and retrieving digital information. An HDD retains its data even when powered off. Data is read in a random-access manner, meaning individual blocks of data can be stored or retrieved in any order rather than just sequentially. An HDD consists of one or more rigid ("hard") rapidly rotating discs (platters) with magnetic heads arranged on a moving actuator arm to read and write data to the surfaces.

The HDD is one of the core components that make up a modern PC. The hard disk capacity determines the amount of files and programs that can be stored and the disk speed and type have a great influence on the overall performance of the computer.

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What are the Windows A: and B: drives used for?

In Windows you have a C-drive. Everything labeled beyond that is with the following letter. So your second drive is D, your DVD is E and if you put in a USB stick it becomes F and the following drive G. And so on and so forth. But then, what and…
Demian Kasier
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Why is Google so much faster than a hard-drive search?

When I search a file on my HD in Windows 7 or Windows XP it takes some minutes to finish the process. If I fill in a search term in Google, the answer is on my screen in milliseconds How is it possible for Google to search the Internet, which is…
Arne
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Is there still a reason to choose a 10,000 RPM hard drive over an SSD?

For anyone who's serious about storage performance, SSDs are always the fastest solution. However, WD still makes their 10,000 RPM VelociRaptor hard drives, and a few enthusiasts even use enterprise-grade 15,000 RPM SAS hard drives. Aside from cost,…
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What is the purpose of the holes marked "Do Not Cover" on hard drives?

On many hard drives, there's a text warning to "not cover this hole", sometimes adding that doing so will void the warranty. What is the purpose of this hole and why would covering it cause damage or increase the likelihood of drive failure? (Image…
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What utility can move my Windows boot partition over to another hard drive?

Can anyone recommend a cheap/free utility that can do this without very much effort? My preference is that it would be really easy. Boot into Windows Pick drive to move Pick target drive It copies everything over, and reboots to the correct…
Breadtruck
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How can I read my hard drive’s SMART status in Windows 7?

How can I read the S.M.A.R.T. state of my HDDs while using Windows 7, either automatically or manually?
Adrian Grigore
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Windows Disk I/O 100% at boot for 20 Minutes

I have a fast computer (quad-core i7, 3.5 Ghz, 24 GB of RAM, Windows 8.1) and I installed a new hard drive less than a year ago that was supposed to be as fast as you could buy for an HHD and not an SSD. On boot, the computer is extremely slow for…
Jason
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How to check the health of a hard drive

My SATA drive started clicking and I was unable to access the data. It was not clicking loudly though, like a drive that has already gone bad. After tightening the connections to the hard drive, it stopped clicking and I was able to access the data…
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Why do damaged hard drives freeze the entire system?

Why does a hard drive which is known to have bad blocks (verified in HDTune and HDDScan), freezes down my entire system? It is not the OS drive; it is attached to another SATA port, and I'm trying to copy files from it to another healthy drive. I…
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Why is CBS.log file size 20 GB

Two days ago I had a full C: drive, after which I deleted 8 GB of data. The next day the hard drive was full again, so I continued with deleting another 5 GB, and once again the next day the disk was full. After some searching for what caused the…
skmasq
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Use physical harddisk in Virtual Box

Using Virtual Box, how can I install an OS to a secondary, physical disk, and boot it in both (at separate times) Virtual Box, and as a typical secondary OS install?
Petah
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How much space to leave free on HDD or SSD?

In the informal (i.e. journalistic) technology press, and in online technology blogs and discussion forums, one commonly encounters anecdotal advice to leave some amount of space free on hard disk drives or solid state drives. Various reasons for…
user11574
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How can I shrink a Windows 10 partition?

I use a big single partition on a 1TB platter drive with Windows 10. I would like to shrink the partition down so that I can mirror the drive to a smaller but faster 256GB SSD. I bought the drive without planning much. (Oops.) I saw that I'm only…
kdbanman
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How can I move the page file to another physical disk location?

I would like to know exact instructions for moving the page file from 1 disk location to another disk in Windows 7. I.e. from an SSD to a non-SSD drive. I've spent about two hours searching - Google, Bing, Blekko - and read many forums. Please…
JL.
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What does it mean when my new HDD reports errors at a time that shouldn't exist?

I just installed several new HDDs in a machine and I happened to notice one of them had two errors reported, so I ran smartctl -x on it and got this: smartctl 6.5 2016-01-24 r4214 [x86_64-linux-4.4.0-141-generic] (local build) Copyright (C) 2002-16,…
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