Hard drive (hard disks):

A PC's primary largest physical storage area is usually the 'hard drive'.

The picture above illustrates the hard disk platters which are contained within a metal chassis. In all this, component is approximately the size of a walkman radio. When you choose to save information to your C:\ (hard drive) the data is written to disks by the read/write heads. When you choose to delete an item it is never erased or deleted. A master file keeps track of which information is where. When you choose to delete an item the list or 'File allocation table' (a.k.a. FAT) is told that area is now free to be written over. The chassis containing your hard disk platters is airtight and dust proof. One single hair or particle of dust on a platter is like a boulder on the freeway.

When your PC starts up the read/write heads actually take-off. The platters begin to spin at a high rate of speed with the read/write heads floating on a cushion of air barely above the platters. If the heads ever actually touch the platters during operation, the drive is said to be 'crashed' and no longer operational. Different hard drives do access data at different speeds.
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