A hard drive in slow motion is truly a sight to behold [Video]

Unless your computer is fancy and sports a Solid State Drive (SSD), it likely contains a hard drive of the spinning disk variety. That’s alright; those quickly moving metal circles have been the norm for nearly as long as computers have existed. Punch cards, eat your heart out.

A neat group on YouTube, The Slow Mo Guys, have put together a simply stunning, and if I may, drenching, look at how a hard drive works, moment by moment, breaking down how fast they really do zip along. As it turns out, your local drive is more workhorse than you imagined. Prepare to be impressed:

The clip is sad, in a way, as all that it sported will soon go away; SSDs are quickly racing over the horizon. Physical media is over, if not quite yet dead. Soon enough, kids will wonder what the heck we are talking about when we mention hard drive speeds. But for the progress of technology, much must be lost.