Short Description of Hard Disk Drive Structure and Principle of Operation

The information store on hard magnetic disks (НDD - Hard Disk Drive), also "Winchester", conventionally consists of the hermetic block and electronics board. The hermetic block is filled by usual dust-free air under atmospheric pressure, and it contains all the mechanical parts. The hard disk drive kinematics consists of one or several magnetic disks rigidly fixed on a spindle of the engine, and positioning system of magnetic heads. The magnetic head is placed on one of the sides of a rotating magnetic disk and carries out data reading and data recording from a surface of the magnetic disks rotating with speed up to 15 000 revolutions per minute. Heads are fixed on special holders and are moved the centre and edge of disk by positioning system between. Exact positioning of magnetic heads is carried out according to servo information recorded on the disk. While reading it out, the positioning system defines a current strength which must be passed through the coil of an electromagnetic drive for keeping of a magnetic head over a demanded track.

At power on, the Winchester processor carries out electronics testing, and then produces a command of spindle motor switching on. When some critical speed of rotation is achieved, the density of air carried along by disk surfaces becomes high enough to overcome the heads force of clipping to a surface and raising less than micron above surfaces of disks. From this point an until the speed decrease below the critical level, the heads "soar" on an air cushion and do not touch surfaces of disks at all. After the disk achieves the speed of rotation which is close to nominal speed, the heads are taken out from the parking zone, and search for servo marks for exact stabilization of speed of rotation begins. Then reading of a microcode and other service information from a magnetic surface is carried out. In the end of initialization the testing of system of positioning by search for the set sequence of tracks is carried out and if it passes successfully, the hard disk drive informs about sanity. In order to increase the reliability of information storage the firmware of hard disk drives traces technological parameters (SMART) accessible to reading and the analysis by the program that notifies the user about approaching failure.