Don't buy hard disk without reading this | Hard drive buying guide

Hard drive buying guide

Hard drive buying guide

Your disc drive encompasses a number of magnetized platters connected to a spindle. The Spindle spins the platters at a fast pace while trying to find and write information on both of them in a series of read / write heads.

This information is transferred via a cable television service, or through a wireless connection to a stringent control, which in most systems is built into the motherboard, or in some systems installed as an add-in card. The data comes from your disc drive through its controller.

The efficiency of your disc drive (its performance) depends on the quantity of its capacity remaining unused, how well organized the information is (known as fragmentation) and its data transfer rate, which successively depends on its connection type and therefore the drive's spin rate .

Internal Hard Drives

From most computers, to the foremost basic home models to the most powerful servers, have an internally installed disc drive. Technology today ensures that they are all fast, reliable, and offer dependable storage capacity. The latest computers have installation disc slots and cabling to enable you to put in additional disc drive. These permits allow you to extend your storage capacity without jilting your existing disc drive.

Internal Hard Drives

External Hard Drives

These drives are essentially identical drives that are installed inside computers, but cased inside are a protective, portable case. This is often an honest solution for those who work remotely and move on to large amounts of information. If an external disc drive is your choice, your computer is compatible with the interface that the disc drive uses. An add-in card, like a FireWire card can help extend your computer's capabilities

External Hard Drives

Laptop Hard Drives

There are many advances in miniaturization for hardware components such as laptop computing, and disc drive technology. Laptop hard drives function in the same way as internal hard drives on other computers, and they are designed to supply the maximum storage and efficiency within the smallest possible package. For added flexibility, some laptop computers include removable hard drives which can be easily installed and removed. However, before you buy your personal computer, the specifications of the hard drive will meet the standards of your computer, as many laptop hard drives are proprietary, and more compatible with other brands and models.

Laptop Hard Drives

Size

Your disc drive stores your package, its programs (games and applications), your working data, and your digital music and films. Most new computer purchases have a minimum of 80 GB of fixed disk space; Many have considerably more. disc drive space is one of those things, once you have got it, you will find ways to fill it. There is no real rule of thumb, but consider the value of Gigabyte's storage as a way to guide your purchase. If you're employed with large files, like music, video and graphics, it pays to own an enormous space for your work. It's going to pay you two hard drives, one that houses all of your programs and applications, and another for storing your work and projects.

You may want to match the value of say a 160GB drive against two separate 80 GB drives. If one drive fails all isn't lost. Today's hard drives however, are fairly robust pieces of kit and providing they're not abuse, will serve you well for a protracted period of your time.

up to 32 GB Hard Drives

32-64 GB Hard Drives

64-100 GB Hard Drives

100 GB and more Hard Drives

Interface

One key distinguishing factor is the hard drives that they connect with your computer during the way. There are a variety of basic styles of connection schemes with hard drives. Performance in each connection type encompasses a range of differences.

IDE (INTEGRATED DRIVE ELECTRONICS)

These are the foremost common connection methods. Because the disc drive controller is the drive itself instead of the motherboard, it helps keep costs down. There are different IDE standards available. Mostly, your computer can support the fastest possible standard. Most computers will support a typical faster than what the PC currently supports, so you can buy a faster drive, and update your computer at a later time. The various IDE standards, so as to be the fastest to most elementary, are:

ATA (Basic). Supports up to 2 hard drives and features a 16-bit interface, handling transfer races to eight.3 MB per second.

ATA-2 or EIDE (Enhanced IDE). Supports transfer races to 13.3 MB per second.

ATA-3. A minor upgrade to ATA-2 and offers transfer races to 16.6 MB per second.

Ultra-ATA (Ultra-DMA, ATA-33 or DMA-33). Dramatic speed improvements, with transfer rates up to 33 MB per second.

ATA-66. A version of ATA that doubles transfer rates up to 66 MB per second.

ATA-100. An upgrade to the ATA standard supporting transfer rates up to 100 MB per second.

ATA-133. Found mostly in AMD-based systems (not supported by Intel), with transfer rates up to 133 MB per second.

IDE / EIDE Hard Drives

Serial ATA Hard Drives

Ultra DMA 100 Hard Drives

SCSI hard drives

Ultra320 SCSI Hard Drives

FIREWIRE (IEEE 1394)

The FireWire standard is becoming popular in portable hard drives because it are often connected and removed without having to reboot the pc. It supports data transfer rates of fifty MB per second, which suggests it's ideal for video, audio and multimedia applications. FireWire requires a fervent add-in card and therefore the hard drives in use require an external power source, but the interface can support up to 63 devices simultaneously.

FireWire Hard Drives

Usb 1.1 (Universal Serial Bus)

Pretty much all computers today include USB motherboards on their motherboards. (On older model, you can install an add-in card.) USB controllers are often wont to connect to external hard drives, and might support as many as 127 devices simultaneously via USB port hubs or linked in an exceedingly daisy. chain fashion. USB controllers do supply power to the devices, but many hard drives still use an external power source. USB is restricted by its data transfer speed, the utmost rate being about 1.5 MB per second.

USB Hard Drives

USB 2.0 (HI-SPEED USB)

A more recently introduced and much better connection standard that provides backward compatibility and data transfer rates of up to 60 MB per second. USB 1.1 system can use a USB 2.0 device; it'll need a USB 2.0 controller card to attain the upper transfer rates.

USB 2.0 Hard Drives

FIBRE CHANNEL

Fibre Cabling is principally used for high-bandwidth network servers and workstations, providing in no time data transfer rates (up to 106MB per second), and connection at long cabled distances, although it's expensive and you would like to put in a special interface card.

Spin rate

The data transfer rate is exactly how you want your computer performs. Except for the connection types, the performance of your drive depends on its spin rate and measured RPM. Higher RPM means faster data transfer rate. The bottom spin speed is acceptable in computing today at 5400 RPM. The common standard nowadays is 7200 RPM. But higher speeds are available in SCSI drives, and it's one area of ​​ADP system technology that's being developed to be the most important.

3600 RPM Hard Drives

4200 RPM Hard Drives

5400 RPM Hard Drives

7200 RPM Hard Drives

10000 RPM Hard Drives

15000 RPM Hard Drives

A larger capacity drive won't necessarily make your system function any faster unless you're low on available space together with your existing drive. But a drive with Ultra ATA/100 or ATA/133 and a 7200 RPM spin rate will just about guarantee an improved drive performance.

Other considerations

CACHE

Cache (pronounced 'cash') is an additional temporary memory that acts as a buffer between the system and therefore the drive. Frequently accessed data is stored within the cache for quick access. Cache sizes vary from 512 KB to 16 MB on some SCSI drives. The bigger the cache you've got, the faster your drive will transfer data. If you're working with large files, like video, images and audio files, it's the most important cache you can pay for (8MB or more).

SEEK TIME

The data on your disk is stored in tracks and sectors and once you instruct your drive controller to retrieve some data, it goes. The interval could be a measure of how long it takes to search the drive to a selected track. Seek times can vary slightly from disk to disk and drive with a faster interval will always be better.

INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL TRANSFER RATES

These two rates tell how briskly a drive actually reads the information and passes it to the system. The Internal Transfer Rate refers to the time it takes for a drives heads to read the data from the platter and pass it to the drive's cache. The External Transfer Rate (sometimes called the Transfer Rate or the Burst Transfer Rate) is a measure of the time it takes to send the information from the cache to the computer's memory. Naturally faster transfer rates provide better performance.

S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology)

This is a pleasant built-in feature that may cause some hard drives to warn you of a possible hardware problem. Your computer's BIOS must support this so-called SMART function to figure it out, however the drive itself will still be without a system.