Icons

Icons

Hard drives are traditionally symbolized as either a stylized stack of platters (in orthographic projection) or, more abstractly, as a cylinder. This is particularly found in schematic diagrams or on indicator lights, as on laptops, to indicate hard drive access. In most modern operating systems, hard drives are instead represented by an illustration or photograph of a hard drive enclosure. These are illustrated below.

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  Today, hard drives are symbolized by a picture of the enclosure.
  
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  Schematically, hard drives may be represented by cylinders or stacks of platters, as in this RAID diagram.
  
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  The cylinder schematic derives from hard drives internally being a stack of platters, as in these 1970s vintage disk pack (cover removed).