The hard drive is one of the  most important components in your computer.

It is your primary  communications center and data storage area for all of the  information you use on you computer.

This is where the operating system, application files, device drivers and utilities are stored. It is also where you store your created documents, photos, music, games and all of the documents you work with.

 

If you plan to do some heavy duty graphics and video editing, you should get the largest, fastest drive you can afford. Today's drives are inexpensive, fast and highly reliable. You will experience a large  improvement in your system's overall performance.

The Hard Disk Drive Review

There are two basic types of hard drive interfaces.

The Small Computer System Interfaces (SCSI) and
 the Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE).

 In the recent past, the SCSI was the expensive, faster, hard drive alternative to the slightly slower, inexpensive IDE.

The Small Computer System Interfaces (SCSI) Is still being improved and used in systems that requires its special features. However, unless you are sure that you really need a SCSI drive for  your particular system. I would recommends that you stick with the IDE drives. 

The Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE)  are simpler, cheaper, and have become extremely faster and more flexible during the past years. they are available in sizes up to 500GB. They have increased in speed and size but have decreased in cost.

This cost decrease benefits those of us who would like to have more drive capacity. You can actually build your drive capacity to equal that used by multimedia systems by creating an array of drives using the extra space in side your case and by adding external drives.

And you don't have to use one big drive size to build your drive capacity. As of this writing you could find internal and external  and drives in the following sizes:  20GB, 40GB, 80GB, 120GB 200GB, 250GB, 400GB and 500GB. There are probably other sizes that I'm not aware of, but this is enough to make my point.

While The IDE has more than one drive size, it also has more than one name. It is also known as the AT Attachment interface (ATA). It has all of its controller electronics on the drive itself. This means you don't have to spend extra money buying a separate disk drive controller card, its all part of the drive. A point to remember, the IDE and ATA are the same standard.      

The Enhanced Integrated Drive Electronics (EIDE)

Like everything else in computer technology, the IDE Interface has been upgraded to a faster version called The Enhanced Integrated Drive Electronics (EIDE). This drive is the second IDE standard that are called ATA-2 and EIDE/ATAPI (AT  Attachment Packet Interface)

The important points to remember about the EIDE interface is that its speed  is twice as fast as the IDE's. The IDE runs at 8.3MBps while the EIDE runs at 16.7MBps. The EIDE also support at least four IDE devices if you have the space inside your system's case.   

The IDE/EIDE  drive comes  with a 40 pin IDE cable to connect to the IDE connector on the system board. As well as the items listed below.
 

● Hard Drive Install Disk     • EZ-Install         • BIOS check         • Diagnostics         • Ultra ATA Management                   ● Installation Guide

Low-End Hard Drives

If you are a computer beginner and only want to surf the web and exchange email photos with your family and friends, the drive specifications listed  below may be as much computer as you will need for now...    Western Digital / Caviar SE / 200GB / 7200 / 8MB / ATA-100 / EIDE / OEM / Hard Drive.  Click on drive image for more details.      ● Size: 120GB to 200GB   ● Speed: 5400 rpm to 7200 rpm   ● Buffer Size: 8MB ●  Interface Speed: Ultra ATA/100,  ATA/100, or SATA-150 ● Capacity (GB) 200 ● Seek Speed: 9.5ms to 12.5ms

Mid-range Hard Drives

If you are an experienced computer user and want to use your PC for personal and business uses, the drive specifications listed here will probably be a perfect fit. Read more Western Digital Caviar SE16 400GB Hard Drive - 7200, 16MB, SATA-300, OEM  Click on drive image for more details.      Recemmended   ● size: 250GB to 400GB   ● Speed: 7200 rpm   ● Buffer Size: 8MB or 16MB   ● Data Transfer Rate on Serial ATA 3000Mb/sec   ● Interface Speed: Serial ATA/300,     ATA/133, SATA-150, or SATA-300   ● Seek Speed:8.9ms to 11ms

High-End Hard Drives

If you are a power user and will be doing  heavy graphics video editing work this drive is you best bet.  Western Digital Caviar SE16 400GB Hard Drive - 7200, 16MB, SATA-300, OEM. Click on drive image for more details.     ● size: 500GB   ● Speed: 7200 rpm to 10,000 rpm   ● Buffer Size: 8MB or 16MB   ● Interface Speed: Ultra ATA/100,     ATA/133, or SATA-300   ● Seek Speed: 4.2ms to 11ms

How to install the Serial ATA (SATA) External Universal Serial Bus (USB) 2.0) Hard Drive. If you want to expand your storage capacity and give yourself the means to back your entire fixed hard drive, I suggest adding one of the currently available Serial ATA (SATA) external hard drives. I purchased a preformatted, 80GB external USB 2.0, Serial ATA hard drive about two weeks ago and I love it. It is small, light weight and  was extremely easy to install. All I had to do was plug it into the Universal Serial Bus (USB) port on the back of my computer, plug the power cord  into the electrical outlet, turn the drive on by pushing the front mounted power button.    Next, I  restarted my computer (Which wasn't necessary for drive recognition) and the external hard drive showed up in Windows Explorer, in My Computer Folder as drive letter "F". The whole process took less than ten minutes. One of the nice things about the external drive is you can unplug it and move to a different computer and use it. The only requirements is that the computer you move it to have a Universal Serial Bus (USB) 2.0 port and is running windows 98SE/Me/2000/XP.   USB And Fire wire Combo PCI Adapter Card I know  many of you may not  have a Universal Serial Bus (USB) or  Fire wire ports on your current motherboard, Right? Well the solution to this problem is solved by adding a USB & Fire wire Combo PCI Adapter Card. These adapter cards are dirt cheap. So Cost shouldn't be a problem.  One adapter card will allow you to run 127 devices using USB Hubs. Your system's minimum requirements are

● Any IBM Compatible PC with at least one free PCI slot.   ● Windows 98SE, 2000, ME and XP... Learn more here

Features                     Benefits   ● Front mounted power button   ● Easy Access   ● Preformatted hard drive   ● Time saver   ● 7200rpm rotational speed   ● Better PC performance   ● Design for near silent running   ● Less Noise Distractions   ● Fast, easy connection to PC   ● Easy install, saves time   ● Cool, heat-dissipating   ● Extends the life of the drive   ● Stands vertically or horizontally   ● Saves space on your desk top   ● Stackable   ● This also saves space if you two           or more drives   ● Low cost   ● You save money   The Complete Kit Includes   ● The External USB 2.0 hard drive         ● 6 ft USB certified cable         ● AC adapter with power cord         ● Vertical       ●  Feet for horizontal mounting   ● Quick install guide

One of the major advantages of the external hard drive is you can use its capacity to backup data from your fixed drives.  The SATAs are available in sizes up to 500GBs.

If you plan to add an external drive to your system, The Serial ATA (SATA) External USB 2.0 Hard Drive is my best recommendation... Read more Learn more here

Here are a few things to remember when selecting your next drive:

● Capacity - No matter how  you intend to use your system it     best to have as much drive capacity as you can afford.         ●  Rotational Speed - Most Parallel and Serial ATA  drive have a      rotating speed from 5400rpm to 7200rpm. Some Serial ATA drives used in server, runs at speeds of 10,000rmp. While you can find drive run 5400rpm, stay away from them. For average desktop I recommend you focus only on the ones with     speeds of 7200rpm or better.         ● Interface Speed - You may be aware or not that most of the      internal drives in new PC systems are Serial ATA interfaces.  The Serial ATA interface supports transfer speeds of 150MBps  or 300MBps.  The Parallel ATA still available with a maximum transfer speed of 100MBps or 133MBps. But the handwriting is on the wall. It is just a matter of time before the PATA is completely replaced by the much faster SATA interface.    If you have an older system that doesn't support SATA ports and you would like to upgrade... You can read more Here         ●  Seek Speed -This is the speed at which the drive's read and write heads  read and write data to and from the surface of your hard disk drive.         ● Buffer Size -The buffer is where the information is stored that      the system has requested and most likely will request again. Because this  information the system is looking for is already in a buffer it doesn't have to retrieve it  from the hard drive,  which takes much longer.  As a result, the data retrieve time is faster and the overall system data processing speed is faster.

Recommendations  When you are ready to select the best hard drive for your purpose, just think ahead about  how you want to use it. What type PC will it be installed in? What size do you need? etc....

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