Hard disk


 * See also Filesystems, which are contained on Hard Disks.

A hard disk is a bulk-storage device using rotating platters on which magnetic data is stored. It stores more data than a floppy disk, but is usually less portable (though there are removable hard disk units which can be moved between different computers). Old-time computerists sometimes referred to hard disks as "Winchesters" after the code name of one version of them at IBM.

By the late 1980s, nearly all computers had at least one hard disk drive, and the capacity rapidly increased, going from megabytes to gigabytes, and now terabytes.