A hard drive is where you can store software, documents, photos, etc., in your computer. Think of it as trunk space in a car, except you’ll be storing things in your trunk long-term, instead of just packing an overnight bag!
Here, too, computers large and small have been able to store more and more as time has passed. At the moment, the capacity of what you can store on a hard drive is measured in bytes. For most computers, hard drive storage is measured in Megabytes (MB), Gigabytes (GB), and even Terabytes (TB). If you’re not up to speed on the Metric System, here’s a quick way to learn what the difference is, in terms of computers: Remember those little square discs you used to be able to pop into your computer about 10 years ago? Well, one of those could hold just over 1 Megabyte (MB) of data. By contrast, 1,000 Megabytes (or 1,000 of those little square discs) equals about 1 Gigabyte (GB). And, you guessed it, 1,000 Gigabytes equals about 1 Terabyte (TB).
If you go shopping for computers, you’ll notice that most basic desktops and laptops will come standard with at least a 40, 60, or 80GB hard drive. The more expensive desktops and laptops usually have hard drives with anywhere from 100 – 500 GB of storage. At the high end, some machines are now in or around the TB neighborhood for storage. That’s a lot of trunk space!