Hard disk drives have become an indispensable element of each and every computer nowadays. It holds all your data, the operating system, provides virtual memory to release burden off of the RAM and lot more!
We’ve come a long way since the days of Floppy disks and today, HDD’s have the ability to store terabytes of information on them. And they are all affordable too! Hard disk drives are often referred to as “Data Center” of PCs.
The two main varieties of HDD’s on the market – SATA (serial ATA) and SCSI (Small Computer System Interface)
Factors to be considered while buying a HDD:
| Form Factor:
Just like the Form Factor for motherboard, HDD’s form factor is important so that it fits properly into your case. Make sure you check the size of your HDD and the slot where it fits in your PC or laptops. |
| UDMA speed rating:
UDMA speed refers to the maximum speed of data exchange between your system memory and the hard disk drive buffer. All you have to do is to check your motherboard’s maximum data transfer speed and then find a HDD whose speed rating matches it. |
| Buffer:
This section of the HDD is used as a high speed memory reserve area which temporarily holds small amount of data while it is waiting to be read from or written to the drive. Generally, higher the buffer the better. 8MB should suffice. |
| HDD platter speeds (measured in RPM): This is another performance related parameter. Hard disk drives nowadays run at high RPM. Common speeds of 5400 and 7200 RPM are available. Higher RPM translates to higher performance and faster data transfer. There are even 10,000 RPM HDDs available out there! |
Trackbacks /
Pingbacks