The Hard Drive Buyers Guide

By: Steve Jones

As home computers become more advanced, and our uses for them
become more complex, the need for higher performance and
capacity hard drives increases. It is now possible to choose
hard drives with vastly different capacities and rotational
speeds, making things more confusing for the consumer.

Thankfully for consumers the hard drive market is extremely
competitive and the price at which a high capacity hard drive
can be bought is quite astounding. Now that broadband internet
is common place, with more and more people downloading music and
movies, the need for high specification hard drives has never
been greater.

When choosing a new hard drive it is important to consider What
you use your computer for. Thos who just use their home pc for
basic requirements such as word processing and surfing the
internet will not need to spend as much on their hard drive as
someone who may use music applications or lots of games. When
buying a hard drive also try and anticipate any future
requirements also.

Lets consider the following hard drive specifications:

1)Capacity

2)Rotational speed

3)Buffer size and transfer rates



In terms of capacity, hard drives can range from 30 - 300 GB. 40
GB hard drives are fairly standard these days. If all you will
be using your PC for is to run a few basic software applications
and games then this will provide you with plenty of space. But
as most people these days are generally also using their home
computer to store lots of music, videos and photos, I would
strongly recomend buying something between 60 - 120 GB capacity.
With hard drives being relatively cheap these days it is better
to buy something that will continue to provide storage in the
future, than go for a smaller option now and have to upgrade
sooner.

The second factor we really need to consider is the rotational
speed of the hard drives. This has become a big selling point
for manufacturers. The speed is measured in revolutions per
minute and you will find figures such as 5400RPM, 7200RPM,
10000RPM, 15000RPM quoted by the hard drive manufacturers. Hard
drives work by reading information from rotating magnetic
platters as they rotate, hence the faster the rotating speed,
the quicker the information is read. There is a down side to
faster rotating speeds though, and that is wear and tear. The
faster a hard drive spins the quicker it will wear out and it
will also be more vulnerable to crashes. Rotational speed is
really important, so if your going to be using your PC for music
or gaming then you need to buy a 7200RPM drive. If its just for
basic usage then a 5400RPM drive will suffice. Again as the
price difference between 7200RPM and 540RPM drives is minimal,
you may consider opting for the faster speed as this will not
need upgrading as soon.

The buffer size and transfer rates will not be of importance to
many people, and only need to be considerd by people building
dedicated games machines or for high end music applications. The
buffer is used as a temporary store for data and the larger the
buffer size the better your pc will operate. It is possible to
buy hard drives with a buffer size of 8MB. Its best to buy a
drive with as large a buffer as you can afford. The same is true
for transfer rates, buy the drive with the highest transfer rate
that you can afford.

This buyers guide should have covered all the points you need to
consider when purchasing your new hard drive, but if you want
more information then plenty is avaiable on the internet. For
further information please visit
http://www.officialharddrive.com

About the author:
Steve jones has worked with computers all his life and now
writes for www.officialharddrive.com