Read About Platter

Inside the hard drive assembly resides one of the most important internal components of the hard drive, the platters, it is a round platter or disk if you like inside of the Hard Drive Assembly. In terms of disk you may be thinking of the old floppy disk. These are far from that they are solid, rigid platters and can be stacked up on top of one another. These are what we would refer to as single, dual or multi platter. Most modern hard drives of 500GB contain 3 platters. They are stacked one on top of the other using spacers to keep them apart and to provide room for the heads to fly. Read on if you want to know more about the workings of a hard disk and its platters.

Most platters are made from either aluminum or glass substances. The disks or platters are then coated on both sides with another chemical substrate very thinly, the process is called magnetron sputtering. This coating itself has a structure of various non metallic alloy compounds and acts as an underlay. The next layer is the one we commonly think of which is magnetic and often applied as a film on top of which a protective overcoat is layered by using the same sputtering processes. Another layer is added to the disk which is the lubricant and the method for applying this is simply dipping.

The entire disks or platters surface is then very highly buffed to remove any anomalies or defects and a sensor on the head is used to test for any remaining problems. The heads fly evenly over the platter surface in a radial motion while accessing and reading data from them. The surface must be defect free to accurately record and read information or data.

A new technology has recently been used to change the way in which data is recorded this is known as perpendicular magnetism. This technology has again increased storage capacities.

The speed at which the platters spin are also very dependant on the motor of the spindle, a common speed is 7200RPMfor desktop drives, the WD Raptor spins at around 10,000 but the price increases for this technology. Most modern laptop hard drives spin at 5400RPM.

In most drives you will not find much room at the side of the platter, they tend to extend as far as they can within the hard drive chassis. This is done to maximize storage capacity, the larger the platter the more data you can store.

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