Hard drive

From Gentoo Linux Wiki

A hard disk is where data is stored and accessed by your pc when it needs it

this data can be in the form of installed programs or your documents and multimedia content

the hard disk is probably one of the largest bottlenecks in a modern pc and in terms of desktop performance with a fast disk boosting performance much more than a processor upgrade and can even speed up compiles

because of the way hard disks work it is always preferable to place the programs that need fast access and data transfer at the start of the disk, since multimedia content can only be streamed at a fraction of the disk capacity its advisable to keep a seperate /home partiton at the end of the disk while your programs which will respond faster with better disk performance should be kept at the start

See also: Wikipedia:hard drive