Year 11 were discussing storage in their computing revision lesson today and, one of the students asked how a hard drive worked.

Because of the way we have built the Pi Shop over the years we often have old bits of redundant hardware laying around so we took some time out of the lesson to take an old hard drive to pieces to see how it was put together (by taking it apart!). We were able to see how the head moves over the platter to create the series of 0s and 1s that go to making up the memory.

Unfortunately, halfway through disassembling the unit, one of the students stripped a screw which brought the dismantling of the unit to a halt and brought about cries of ‘do you have a hammer?’.

The main thing we learnt from the lesson today, apart from how a HDD works, is if you want something taken apart quickly, give it to the Year 11s, unless of course you want to put it back together…