External mechanical drives can be safely stored while powered down in a laptop bag, so even though mechanical drives are no longer popular inside mobile devices, they're never far behind. In desktop computers which (hopefully) don't experience any physical impacts, a large mechanical mass storage drive is still an incredibly valuable resource.
Somewhat ironically, mechanical hard drives have also benefited from SSD technology in the form of "hybrid" hard drives. These drives contain a small amount of fast flash memory that acts as a data cache.
If you’ve ever experienced a head crash, stiction, or painfully slow read/write speeds, then you know first hand the frustrations that accompany hard disk drives (HDDs). Due to the mechanical build of HDDs, the possibility of hardware issues and limitations on performance are inevitable.
In desktop computers which (hopefully) don't experience any physical impacts, a large mechanical mass storage drive is still an incredibly valuable resource. Retrieving data from a mechanical hard drive is still much faster than downloading it from cloud storage, after all. Readers like you help support How-To Geek.
A Hard Disk Drive (HDD) is a traditional data storage device that uses mechanical platters and a moving read/write head to access data. This technology has been the foundation of digital storage for decades.
If you bought a laptop or desktop PC anytime in the last few years, you almost certainly have a solid-state drive (SSD) as your computer's primary boot drive. You can rest assured that you're using the best storage technology available today. However, there's an alternative for your secondary-storage needs: the long-familiar hard disk drive (HDD).