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permanently mounted inside the drive housing. Several hard
disk platters are stacked vertically in the drive housing and
sealed in a dustproof casing.
Second, a hard disk holds much more information than a
diskette. The “high-capacity” diskettes used in your computer
can only hold a little over one million bytes. The hard disk can
hold up much more data than floppy disk.
Finally, as mentioned above, a hard disk is much faster than a
floppy disk drive. The main reason for this is that the hard disk
platters are rigid, allowing them to be rotated at a much higher
rate than floppy diskettes, which have to move relatively slowly
so as to avoid damage.
Care of Hard Disk Drives
As you can see, hard disk drives are very precise devices. This
precision makes for a delicate mechanism. Even though your
hard disk drive is built to withstand the rigors of shipping, it
should be moved as little, and as gently, as possible. If you need
to move your computer system a short distance, be careful not
to drop or bump it. For greater protection, if you need to
transport the computer in a car, or ship it by truck or plane,
pack your system in its original shipping boxes.
The TGSHIP command should be run whenever you are going
to move the main system unit. This command moves the
read/write heads inside the hard disk drive to a “safety zone,”
where they won’t accidentally scratch the surface of the drive
platters. TGSHIP.COM is a special DOS command file
included with your system. You should copy this file into the
root directory of your hard disk drive. For information on hard
disk directory structures, see the “Organizing Your Hard Disk”
section of this chapter.
6-2
Using Your Hard Disk