The hard drive works much like your floppy drive. It contains read/write heads which perform read and write operations. However, unlike the floppy drive, the read/write heads float 10 millionths of an inch above the surface of the hard drive platters.

Hard drives contain more read/write heads than the floppy drive, usually one for each side of the platters. If the read/write heads actually touch the surface of the platters, it causes a head crash. This destroys the surface of the platter, which destroys the data stored on the platter. It also destroys the read/write head. We will talk more about this later.

Like your floppy drive, the hard drive also contains a drive motor which spins the platters at an amazing 3,600-,7200 revolutions per minute! This is ten to twenty times faster than your floppy drive! Your hard drive can do a read or write operation in 10-20 milliseconds which is faster than the blink of your eye!

Why is a hard drive so much faster than a floppy drive? Two reasons: the first already mentioned above, the blazing speed of spinning platters. Second, unlike a floppy drive which only spins the floppy disk when it needs to do a read/write operation, the hard drive is constantly spinning. This means faster read/write operations or faster access time, which is the amount of time it takes the hard drive to locate information.