At the same time, the hard drive is more vulnerable than many other parts of the system and
easier to damage. Compounding the problem are the multiple formats that Microsoft has supported
over the years and the myriad ways in which you can work with a hard drive today, even when you
choose to work with the Windows NT File System (NTFS). Consequently, the hard drive requires
special treatment.
This chapter views the hard drive as the operating system. In other words, you won??™t find any
detailed description of how the hardware works in the chapter and you won??™t see any detailed discussions
of track layout. For the most part, Windows hides the intricacies of the hard drive from you.
The computer industry has also muddied the term
hard drive
in recent years. Most people think
of a hard drive as a box containing spinning disks and several read heads. A hard drive today can
include flash drives, those little solid-state devices you plug into a Universal Serial Bus (USB) slot.
Hard drives can also take on a virtual form with Internet Small Computer System Interface (iSCSI).
This chapter views the hard drive in the same way that the computer industry does within the limitations
of Windows.
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