Please choose a vault from below or make a deposit...
n. Hardware - is a general term for the physical artifacts of a technology. It may also
mean the physical components of a computer system, in the form of computer hardware.
science and technology > HardwareYour PC (Personal Computer) is a system, consisting of many components. Some of those components, like Windows Vista, and all your other programs, are software. The stuff you can actually see and touch, and would likely break if you threw it out a fifth-story window, is hardware.
The system unit is the actual computer; everything else is called a peripheral device. Your computer's system unit probably has at least one CD or DVD drive, into which you can insert CDs/DVDs. There is another disk drive, called the hard disk inside the system unit. You can't remove that disk, or even see it. But it is there. And everything that is currently "in your computer" is actually stored on that hard disk.
The CD/DVD drives are often referred to as drives with removable media or removable drives for short, because you can remove whatever disk is currently in the drive, and replace it with another. Your hard disk can store as much information as hundreds of CD or DVD disks, so don't worry about running out of space on your hard disk any time soon. As a rule, you want to store everything you create or download on your hard disk. Use CDs to send copies of files through the mail, or to make backup copies of important items.
