Disk Forensics about the anatomy of hard drive

To extract data from computers, the person in charge must carefully understand the basic principles of how and where data can be stored in a computer. To understand the basics of how file systems work, you first have to know the basic concepts of how the computer hardware functions in relation to operating and file systems.

The basic storage medium for most computers is the magnetic disk drive.Magnetic disk drives use a magnetic material that’s polarized into a positive or negative charge that accurately spins around.The two distinct polarities of magnets allow the computer to store binary data (0s and 1s) as magnetic charges and thus are an easy way for a computer to store vast amounts of data on a relatively stable physical platform.Hard drive sizes vary depending on their combination of cylinders, heads, and sectors (CHS). Hard drives basic elements are:

• Head: A physical element in the hard drive that reads and writes the magnetic material located on the platters. Most of hard drives use two heads per platter to read the upper and lower surfaces.
• Track: The circular areas on the platter that hold information. hard drive tracks are magnetic and completely concentric. 
• Cylinder: The tracks of multiple platters stacked on top of each other. 
• Sector: The smallest unit of storage on a storage medium, in which tracks are broken down into smaller, more manageable pieces. For the most part, sectors contain 512 bytes .