Hard disk

This is a hard disk drive, or HDD. It is called a hard disk drive because it is not floppy! Originally these data storage devices were called Winchesters after a successful early model. The first hard drives cost thousands of pounds and held about 10mb of data. Most modern hard drives cost under £200 and hold can hold hundreds of gigabytes.

internal hard disk
most hard disks live inside your computer and talk to the rest of your system through an IDE or SCSI connection.

external hard disk
some hard disks live outside a computer, and are attached by USB or firewire. These hard disks are very useful for carrying data between computers. some very small hard disks are being developed for use in other machines such as cameras.