The thing that makes hard drives amazing isn't just the amount of data they store, but more the fact that we're still using them as our primary method of storing and retrieving data decades after they were invented.
The basic principles of hard disks have remained unchanged pretty much since they were invented. Inside the hermetically sealed unit is a spinning platter. Spanning the radius of this platter is a head with a teeny-weeny magnet on the end. Data is written to the rapidly spinning platter with this tiny, fragile head, which never, ever comes into contact with the actual surface of the disk, but hovers just slightly above it -- very close in fact, just a few dozen nanometres.
Despite their incredible fragility, humanity has somehow managed to find a way to install hard drives into MP3 players, laptops, PVRs and pretty much anything else in which you need a shedload of storage for very little cost.
It's even more remarkable to consider that storage on hard drives costs pennies per gigabyte now, and for the most part these drives that spin millions of times a day, for years and years, are very reliable. Sure, from time to time you'll have a failure, but it's rare enough not to ruin most people's lives. It's even more incredible to think something as tiny as a particle of smoke can wreck a hard drive, which makes their general hard-wearing nature even more impressive.
Okay, there's not much mystery about how these things work, but the fact that they have done for so long strikes us as deeply suspicious. Surely there's a little magic going on here?
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