hard drive

American  

[hahrd drahyv] / ˈhɑrd ˈdraɪv /

noun

Computers.

1. HDD.

2. (loosely) a drive for a computer, as a traditional hard disk drive (HDD) or another drive serving a similar function, as opposed to a very small, portable flash drive.

---

hard drive British  

noun

1. computing (on a computer) the mechanism that handles the reading, writing, and storage of data on the hard disk

---

hard drive Scientific  

1. A disk drive that reads data stored on hard disks.

2. Also called hard disk drive

---

hard drive Cultural  

1. The bulk of the memory of a personal computer is magnetically stored on hard disks that constitute the hard drive. Information in the hard drive is durable, in that it remains magnetically stored when the computer is turned off. (See magnetic memory.)

---

Etymology

Origin of hard drive

First recorded in 1980–85

Example Sentences

Daniel landed in Los Angeles with his girlfriend and a hard drive containing $350,000 in bitcoin.

From Los Angeles Times • Mar. 24, 2026

"If implemented at scale, it could represent a milestone in the history of knowledge storage, akin to oracle bones, medieval parchment or the modern hard drive," they said.

From Barron's • Feb. 18, 2026

And unlike most leading U.S. models, R1 is open-weight, meaning that its parameters are publicly available for anyone to download on their hard drive.

From MarketWatch • Jan. 24, 2026

People are using it to analyze federal economic data, recover wedding photos from a corrupted hard drive, build new websites from scratch, answer a barrage of emails or order food.

From The Wall Street Journal • Jan. 17, 2026

The head of the Information Services unit had asked him to replace a hard drive.

From "Geeks: How Two Lost Boys Rode the Internet Out of Idaho" by Jon Katz

Related Words

• disk drive
• hardware
• modem
• personal computer
• supercomputer