If you have room left over on the iPod after transferring your music, you can use it as a portable hard disk, manually copying any computer file to its hard disk to back up files or move them to another Mac.

WSJ: Apple Brings Flair To Its MP3 Player

And scientists can watch the genetic code being accessed like watching a computer reading a hard disk.

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It also makes it easier to find the files that have been created, accessed and modified during an attack, and it is able to reconstruct deleted files from raw data found in various hidden parts of a computer's hard disk, such as unallocated space and file slack.

ECONOMIST: Forensic computing studies the anatomy of computer crime

They also found a Compaq personal computer holding on its hard disk some two gigabytes of encrypted data.

CNN: Books - Excerpt: 'Flint'

This will lead to shortages and higher prices for hard disk drives and will cause problems for computer, consumer and enterprise storage customers well into 2012.

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Mr Scarfo used an encryption program to scramble his computer files so that when the FBI gained access to his hard disk in January 1999, it was unable to unscramble them without the password.

BBC: FBI keeps its bugging secrets

Seagate, Western Digital and Toshiba are shipping hybrid HDDs targeted for the ultra-thin mobile computer market with up to 8 GB of flash memory and 1 TB hard disk storage.

FORBES: New Storage Choices to Drive 2013 Data Markets

Worse, I found that if DirecPC failed to update the site on my hard disk because of a glitch in its service, or I didn't leave my computer on, the news would be a day old.

CNN: Satellite access a mixed bag

Samsung now will also increase its production volume of SSDs with densities over 500GBs for wider adoption of SSDs in computer systems, while leading the transition of main storage drives in the notebook market from hard disk drives (HDDs) to SSDs.

ENGADGET: Samsung puts 128-gigabit 3-bit cell flash into production, plans to build more memory cards