permanently mounted inside the drive housing. Several hard disk platters are stacked vertically in the drive housing and sealed in a dustproof casing.
Second, a hard disk holds much more information than a diskette. The
Finally, as mentioned above, a hard disk is much faster than a floppy disk drive. The main reason for this is that the hard disk platters are rigid, allowing them to be rotated at a much higher rate than floppy diskettes, which have to move relatively slowly so as to avoid damage.
Care of Hard Disk Drives
As you can see, hard disk drives are very precise devices. This precision makes for a delicate mechanism. Even though your hard disk drive is built to withstand the rigors of shipping, it should be moved as little, and as gently, as possible. If you need to move your computer system a short distance, be careful not to drop or bump it. For greater protection, if you need to transport the computer in a car, or ship it by truck or plane, pack your system in its original shipping boxes.
The TGSHIP command should be run whenever you are going to move the main system unit. This command moves the read/write heads inside the hard disk drive to a “safety zone,” where they won’t accidentally scratch the surface of the drive platters. TGSHIP.COM is a special DOS command file included with your system. You should copy this file into the root directory of your hard disk drive. For information on hard disk directory structures, see the “Organizing Your Hard Disk” section of this chapter.