What Is the Purpose of the “Do Not Cover This Hole” Hole on Hard Drives?

Posted by Jason Fitzpatrick on How to geek See other posts from How to geek or by Jason Fitzpatrick
Published on Thu, 25 Oct 2012 20:00:47 GMT Indexed on 2012/10/25 23:04 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 538

Filed under:

superuser

|

Hardware

|

Other

|

hard drives

From tiny laptop hard drives to beefier desktop models, traditional disk-based hard drives have a very bold warning on them: DO NOT COVER THIS HOLE. What exactly is the hole and what terrible fate would befall you if you covered it?

Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-drive grouping of Q&A web sites.

How Hackers Can Disguise Malicious Programs With Fake File Extensions

Can Dust Actually Damage My Computer?

What To Do If You Get a Virus on Your Computer

© How to geek or respective owner

Related posts about superuser

What is Superuser.com acceptance rate?

as seen on Super User - Search for 'Super User'
I apologize if this is stupid question or not for this board... But I keep seeing acceptance rate on this forum. What is this and how is it calculated? >>> More
superuser.com sandbox

as seen on Super User - Search for 'Super User'
Is there a sandbox or demo area in superuser to test the sites functionality? >>> More
Easy line break removal from text fields and/or selections

as seen on Super User - Search for 'Super User'
I'm looking for a tool that allows me to easily re-wrap text (i.e. remove line breaks, but not paragraph breaks from a text selection or the current text field that is being edited), and that works at least with text fields in my browser (Chrome) and on Windows. Bonus points for anything that works… >>> More
Easy text re-wrapping

as seen on Super User - Search for 'Super User'
I'm looking for a tool that allows me to easily re-wrap text (i.e. remove line breaks, but not paragraph breaks from a text selection or a text field), and that works in my browser (Chrome) and on Windows. Bonus points for anything that works outside the browser, and that works in-place (i.e. that… >>> More
How to get rid of superuser`s password?

as seen on Super User - Search for 'Super User'
My father put a new superuser password on my laptop, and now i cant access my computer without him putting the password in. I am really helpless. How can i get rid of his superuser control? Can i delete or change the superuser thing? Please help!!!! >>> More

Related posts about Hardware

Older SAS1 hardware Vs. newer SAS2 hardware

as seen on Oracle Blogs - Search for 'Oracle Blogs'
I got a question today from someone asking about the older SAS1 hardware from over a year ago that we had on the older 7x10 series. They didn't leave an email so I couldn't respond directly, but I said this blog would be blunt, frank, and open so I have no problem addressing it publicly. A quick… >>> More
Installer Reboots at "Detecting hardware" (disks and other hardware) on all recent Server Installs

as seen on Ask Ubuntu - Search for 'Ask Ubuntu'
I have a very frustrating problem with my PC. I cannot install any recent version of Ubuntu Server (or even Desktop) since 9.04 even using the text-based installer. I boot from a USB stick created by Unetbootin (I also tried other methods such as startup disk creator with no difference). On the Server… >>> More
Difference between "machine hardware" and "hardware platform"

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
My Linux machine reports "uname -a" outputs as below:- [root@tom i386]# uname -a Linux tom 2.6.9-89.ELsmp #1 SMP Mon Apr 20 10:34:33 EDT 2009 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux [root@tom i386]# As per man page of uname, the entries "i686 i686 i386" denotes:- machine hardware name (i686) processor type (i686) hardware… >>> More
Remove hardware from "safely remove hardware" list on Windows 7

as seen on Super User - Search for 'Super User'
Hi, I have a USB wifi card (D-Link DWA-125) on a Windows 7 x64 computer. The problem is that the card appears on the "safely remove hardware" list, but I don't ever want to unplug it, so I would like to remove it from the list. So far I have only found solutions that mess with the registry (and… >>> More
Windows 7 Not Recognizing Any Hardware, Linux Recognizing Hardware

as seen on Super User - Search for 'Super User'
I have a new desktop computer with two SSDs: one running Linux Mint 15 (SSD1), the other running Windows 7 (SSD2). My mint runs perfectly - USB wireless adapter is recognized, SSD2 (connected by SATA) is recognized and accessible through the filesystem, Ethernet works, etc. However, my Windows 7… >>> More