Remember floppy disks? Or cassette tapes? It may not seem like it, but the principle behind them is still in use today. They are both magnetic storage devices, and magnetic storage is what makes hard disks work, for example.
If your hard drive is already showing signs of failure and the files matter, see our hard drive and external drive recovery service.
But what does this mean for you as a user? What types of magnetic storage devices are there, and what are their main characteristics? Read on to find out.
What are magnetic storage devices?
Magnetic storage devices record information by magnetizing tiny areas of a magnetic surface. A moving part — a tape or a spinning disk — passes under a head that writes and reads that information. As mentioned above, examples include floppy disks, cassette tapes and the various types of hard disk, including the external disk.
How does magnetic storage work?
So how do these devices work in practice? Below we explain the basics and the difference between the old and the new.
Audio recording
Magnetic recording on tape dates back to 1928, when magnetic tape was invented for audio recording. That technology was analog, and magnetic tape was later adapted to store data on the first computers.
However, tape only allows sequential access: to reach a piece of information, you have to wind through everything before it. That’s fine for listening to music, but impractical for computers that need to reach specific data quickly. That’s why computers moved on to magnetic disks, which allow random access.
Digital recording
Digital magnetic storage devices have a read/write head that moves over a magnetic surface. When writing, the head changes the magnetization of tiny areas of the surface to record data as binary code (bits — zeros and ones). When reading, the head detects those changes in magnetization and reproduces the recorded code.
How the heads are arranged depends on the technology. With floppy disks, for example, what you hold in your hand is the magnetic disk itself, while the read/write heads are in the floppy drive inside the computer. A hard disk, on the other hand, combines the platters and the heads in a single sealed unit.
Types of magnetic storage devices
Hard disks
One of the most widely used storage devices today is the hard disk drive (HDD). It’s found in a huge number of computers and was first developed by IBM, which shipped the first hard disk in 1957. At the time, it could store around 5 megabytes, which was considered a huge amount.
Technology has come a long way since then, and today it’s common to find personal computers with 1 terabyte of storage or much more. That’s 1 million megabytes.
Floppy disks
Floppy disks (also called diskettes) were launched in the 1970s and were a milestone in the technology of the time, because they were easy to carry around and could be read on any computer with a compatible drive. You could call them the ancestors of USB flash drives.
They consisted of a thin magnetic disk sealed in a flat plastic case. The first ones were 8 inches (about 20 centimeters) across, but the format that became most common, and lasted until the early 2000s, was 3.5 inches (about 9 centimeters).
Those 3.5-inch disks held only 1.44 megabytes. They were also fragile, didn’t last as long as other technologies and could wear out with heavy use.
Jaz drives
The Jaz drive was a magnetic storage technology launched in 1995. It was a big step forward for its time, as it used removable cartridges that worked much like a hard disk.
The first cartridges held up to 1 gigabyte, and in 1998 capacity reached 2 gigabytes. Even so, the technology was discontinued in 2002.
DAT tapes
DAT stands for Digital Audio Tape. These are magnetic tapes that work much like cassette tapes, but record in digital format.
The format was developed by Sony in the 1980s and reached the market in 1987. DAT tapes were mainly used by professionals to record audio masters and movie soundtracks, and a variant of the format was also used for data backup. Recording time depends on the audio quality: the higher the quality, the less time fits on a tape.
The rise of SSD storage
Since the 2010s, a new type of storage has become increasingly common: the SSD, or solid-state drive. It’s an electronic technology that stores data in flash memory, with no magnetic or moving parts.
Because they have no moving parts, SSDs withstand knocks and drops much better than hard disks, although flash memory wears out with writing. They are also much faster and use less power. That’s why many users now prefer them, and flash storage is also what smartphones and tablets use.
The role of magnetic storage in archiving
Even so, hard disks are still widely used. Because they cost much less per gigabyte, magnetic disks continue to dominate high-capacity storage, such as backups, NAS devices and data centers.
For the average user, buying a lot of SSD capacity is often too expensive. For example, hard disks of several terabytes are common and affordable, while SSDs of the same capacity cost considerably more.
Could emerging technologies make magnetic storage obsolete?
As we’ve seen, many magnetic storage devices have fallen out of use or been discontinued. But hard disks still have a long future ahead of them.
Even though SSDs are faster and increasingly popular, hard disks still offer much more capacity for the money, which makes them ideal for backups and other uses that need a lot of space. And a hard disk’s lifespan can be quite long if it’s well looked after.
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Conclusion
However, because they are mechanical devices, hard disks can fail because of drops, knocks, high temperatures and other factors. When that happens, it’s important to rely on a specialized company to recover your data.
At Bot, we specialize in disk recovery and have extensive experience with magnetic storage devices. If your disk is showing signs that it’s about to fail or simply won’t connect, get in touch with us. Just fill in the form to start your data recovery.
