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Guide to Buying Hard Drives
By: Andrew Gates
Apart from being one of the most essential parts of
your computer, hard drive storage is constantly
updating, in terms of both capacity of disk space
and in physical size. When it comes time to upgrade
your disk storage, there are a number of factors for
you to take into account. Once you've made basic
decisions about size, connectivity, speed and data
transfer rate, and whether you want an internal
drive or external, you can search through
Myshopping.com.au to find the most suitable brand,
and model, and compare the prices of different
vendors.
Hard Drives
How A Hard Drive Works
Your hard drive has a number of magnetized platters
connected to a spindle. The spindle spins the
platters at a very fast speed while a series of
read/write heads scan over them both looking for and
writing information. This information is transferred
via a cable system, or through a wireless connection
to a hard disk controller, which in most systems is
built into the motherboard, or in some systems
installed as an add-in card. The information that
comes from your hard drive through its controller is
then made available to the components of your
computer. The effectiveness of your hard drive (its
performance) depends on how much of its capacity
remains unused, how well organised the data is
(known as fragmentation) and its data transfer rate,
which in turn is dependent on its connection type
and the drive's spin rate.
Internal Hard Drives
Most computers from, the most basic home models up
to the most powerful servers, have an internally
installed hard drive. Technology today ensures that
they are all generally fast, reliable, and offer
dependable storage ability. Most modern computers
have installation slots and cabling to enable you to
install additional hard drive. This allows you to
increase your storage capacity without giving up
your existing hard drive.
Internal Hard Drives
External Hard Drives
These drives are essentially the same drives as ones
installed inside computers, but cased inside a
protective, portable case. This is a good solution
for people who work remotely and need to transport
large amounts of data. If an external hard drive is
your choice, make sure your computer is compatible
with the interface that the hard drive uses. An
add-in card, such as a FireWire card can help to
increase your computer's capabilities. You can
compare different brands of external hard drives
simply at Myshopping.com.au and search on the
connection type, or other specifications.
External Hard drives
Laptop Hard Drives
There have been many advances in miniaturization of
hardware components for laptop computing, and hard
drive technology is not left out of this loop.
Laptop hard drives function in exactly the same way
as internal hard drives on other computers, only
they are designed to provide maximum storage and
efficiency in the smallest possible package. For
added flexibility, some laptop computers come with
removable hard drives that can be easily installed
and removed. However, before you buy a hard drive
for your portable computer, check that the hard
drive's specifications will meet the standards of
your computer, as many laptop hard drives are
proprietary, and are not compatible with other
brands and models.
Laptop Hard Drives
Size
Your hard drive stores your operating system, its
programs (games and applications), your working
data, and your digital music and movies. Most new
computer purchases have a minimum of 80 GB of hard
disk space; many have considerably more. Hard drive
space is one of those things, once you have it,
you'll find ways to fill it soon enough. There is no
real rule of thumb, but consider the cost per
gigabyte of storage as a way to guide your purchase.
If you work with large files, such as music, video
and graphics, it pays to have a big storage space
for your work. It may pay you to have two hard
drives, one that houses all your programs and
applications, and another for storing your work and
projects.
You may want to compare the price of say a 160GB
drive against two separate 80 GB drives. If one
drive fails all is not lost. Today's hard drives
however, are fairly robust pieces of equipment and
providing they are not abuse, will serve you well
for a long period of 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 between hard drives is
the way in which they connect to your computer.
There are a number of basic types of connection
schemes used with hard drives. Each connection type
has a range of differences in performance.
IDE (INTEGRATED DRIVE ELECTRONICS)
This is by the most common connection methods.
Because the hard drive controller is on the drive
itself rather than on the motherboard, it helps to
keep costs down. There different IDE standards
available. Mostly, you will want to purchase the
fastest possible standard that your computer can
support. Most computers will support a standard that
is faster than what the computer currently supports,
so you can buy a faster drive, and update your
computer at a later time. The different IDE
standards, in order from most basic to fastest, are:
ATA (Basic). Supports up to two hard drives and
features a 16-bit interface, handling transfer
speeds up to 8.3 MB per second.
ATA-2 or EIDE (Enhanced IDE). Supports transfer
speeds up to 13.3 MB per second.
ATA-3. A minor upgrade to ATA-2 and offers transfer
speeds up 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 (SMALL COMPUTER SYSTEM INTERFACE)
This is the hard drive interface standard used by
many high-end PCs, networks and servers, and Apple
Macintosh computers, except for the earliest Macs
and the newer iMacs. While some systems support SCSI
controllers on their motherboards, most feature a
SCSI controller add-in card. SCSI drives are usually
faster and more reliable, and the SCSI interface
supports the connection of many more drives than
IDE. While SCSI drives come in many different
standards, many of them are not compatible with one
another. So it's important be know that your
computer supports the drive you plan to install. The
different SCSI connections are:
SCSI-1. A basic connection using a 25-pin connector,
supporting transfer rates up to 4 MB per second.
SCSI-2. Uses a 50-pin connector and supports
multiple devices with a transfer rate of 4MB per
second.
Wide SCSI. These drives have a wider cable and a
68-pin connection that supports 16-bit data
transfers.
Fast SCSI. Uses an 8-bit bus but transfers data at
10 MB Per second.
Fast Wide SCSI. Doubles both the bus (16-bit) and
the data transfer rate (20 MB per second).
Ultra SCSI or Ultra Wide SCSI. Uses an 8-bit bus and
transfers data at 20 MB per second.
SCSI-3. Features a 16-bit bus and transfers data at
40 MB per second.
Ultra2 SCSI. Uses an 8-bit bus and transfer data at
a rate of 40 MB per second.
Wide Ultra2 SCSI. Uses a 16-bit bus and supports
data transfer rates of 80 MB per second.
SCSI Hard Drives
Ultra320 SCSI Hard Drives
FIREWIRE (IEEE 1394)
The FireWire standard is becoming popular in
portable hard drives because it can be connected and
removed without having to reboot the computer. It
supports data transfer rates of 50 MB per second,
which means it is ideal for video, audio and
multimedia applications. FireWire requires a
dedicated add-in card and 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 ports on
their motherboards. (On older model, you can install
an add-in card.) USB controllers can be used to
connect external hard drives, and can support as
many as 127 devices simultaneously either through
USB port hubs or linked in a daisy chain fashion.
USB controllers do delivery power to devices
connected to them, but many hard drives still use an
external power source. USB is limited by its data
transfer speed, the maximum rate being about at 1.5
MB per second.
USB Hard Drives
USB 2.0 (HI-SPEED USB)
A more recently introduced and far better connection
standard that offers 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 will need a USB
2.0 controller card to achieve the higher transfer
rates.
USB 2.0 Hard Drives
FIBRE CHANNEL
Fibre Cabling is mainly used for high-bandwidth
network servers and workstations, providing very
fast data transfer rates (up to 106MB per second),
and connection at long cabled distances, although it
is expensive and you need to install a special
interface card.
Spin rate
Data transfer rate is crucial to how well your
computer performs for you. Apart from the connection
types above, the performance of your hard drive
depends on its spin rate, measured in RPM. Higher
RPM generally means faster data transfer rate. The
lowest spin speed that is acceptable in computing
today is 5400 RPM. The common standard at present is
7200 RPM. But higher speeds are available in SCSI
drives, and it is one area of computer system
technology that is constantly being developed.
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 hard drive will not necessarily
make your system function any faster unless you are
low on available disk space with your existing
drive. But a drive with Ultra ATA/100 or ATA/133 and
a 7200 RPM spin rate will pretty much guarantee an
improved hard drive performance.
Other considerations
CACHE
Cache (pronounces 'cash') is additional temporary
memory that acts as a buffer between the system and
the drive. Frequently accessed data is stored in the
cache for quick access. Cache sizes vary from 512 KB
up to 16 MB on some SCSI drives. The larger cache
you have on your drive, the faster your drive will
transfer data. If you are working with large files,
such as video, images and audio files, it pays to
have the largest cache you can get (8MB or more).
SEEK TIME
The data on your disk is stored in tracks and
sectors and when you instruct your hard drive
controller to retrieve some data, it goes looking.
The seek time is a measure of how long it takes the
hard drive to find a specific track on a disk. Seek
times can vary slightly from disk to disk and a
drive with a faster seek time will always perform
better.
INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL TRANSFER RATES
These two rates tell how fast a drive actually reads
the data and passes it along to the system. Internal
Transfer Rate refers to the time it takes for a
drives heads to read 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 data from the cache all the way 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 nice built-in feature in some hard drives
that can help alert you to a potential hardware
problem. Your computer's BIOS must support this in
order for the SMART function it to work, however the
drive itself will still work in a system without it.
Buying and installing a hard drive has some
technical aspects that you need to take into
account. Use Myshopping.com.au to compare different
hard drive makes and specifications to find the
drive that will work best for your needs and
computer. You can compare prices and service offers
from different vendors.
Author Bio
MyShopping.com.au helps you compare hard drives and
buy online from top-rated online stores.
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