It's magnetic. It's electric. It's photonic. No, this isn't going to be about a new superhero trio in the Marvel universe. This is all about our precious digital data. We need to store it somewhere secure and stable, in a way that lets us get hold of it and change it faster than you can blink. Forget Iron Man and Thor – we're talking about storage drives!

We've split the anatomy of storage in three parts, all published simultaneously to dissect hard disk drives, solid state storage, and optical drives.

TechSpot's Anatomy of Computer Hardware Series

You might have a desktop PC at work or home. You might use one to work out tax returns or play the latest games; you might even be into building and tweaking computers. But how well do you know the components that make up a PC?