A spindle may refer to any of the following:

  1. A post that holds a reel of magnetic tape or CDs. The picture shows an example of a blank CD spindle. When purchasing blank discs, they are often sold in a spindle like the one shown to the right.

  2. In the case of a hard drive, the spindle (shown below) is what holds the hard drive’s platters in place. With a traditional hard drive, there is the need to have multiple platters. The spindle holds these platters in a fixed position with enough space for the read/write arms to get to the data on the disks.

  • CD-ROM help and support.

CD terms, Hard drive terms, Tape terms

  • Hard drive help and support.