disk drive

American  

noun

Computers.

1. a device that, using an access mechanism under program control, enables data to be read from or written on a spinning magnetic disk, magnetic disk pack, floppy disk, or optical disk.

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disk drive British  

noun

1. computing the controller and mechanism for reading and writing data on computer disks See also disk

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disk drive Scientific  

1. Computer Science A device that reads data stored on a magnetic or optical disk and writes data onto the disk for storage.

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Etymology

Origin of disk drive

First recorded in 1970–75

Example Sentences

It makes a wide variety of motors used in everything from hard disk drives to electric vehicles and also produces machine tools, inspection devices and cooling equipment used at data centers.

From The Wall Street Journal

That requires storage space, creating demand for hard disk drives, or HDDs.

From Barron's

Rare-earth elements are used extensively in artificial intelligence, including disk drives, cooling servers and especially semiconductor fabrication.

From MarketWatch

The company has benefited from a spike in demand for hard disk drives, or HDDs, driven by cloud computing and artificial intelligence.

From Barron's

With AI, the storage companies have a new end market because cloud hyperscalers are buying more disk drives to support the massive amounts of content being generated by AI models.

From MarketWatch

Related Words

• hard disk