Hard Drive

- Store programs and data that are not currently being used by the CPU

- Hard drive stores much more data than a typical PC’s RAM — up to hundreds of gigabytes

- Store programs and data that are not currently being used by the CPU


- Two(2) types:
> The older parallel ATA (PATA)
> Modern serial ATA (SATA)

- PATA drives use a ribbon cable very similar to the one used by floppy drives, whereas SATA drives use a very narrow cable





- Few PCs use Small Computer System Interface (SCSI) drives
> SCSI drives are generally faster and more expensive, so they usually show up only in high-end PCs such as network servers or graphics workstations