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Check the SpecsJan 01 '01 Write an essay on this topic.Ready to buy a new hard drive? In the long run it will pay off if you take your time and carefully check all the specs. Interface The first area of concern is the interface you need. Your computer's documentation should tell you which type of interface it has and thus which type of hard drive you must buy. This is important because newer interfaces often have different cables and connectors (EIDE's 40-pin and 80-pin styles; and SCSI's 25-pin, 50-pin, 68-pin, and 80-pin varieties). Interfaces with faster data transfer rates emerge every few years. New computers are becoming widely available with 66MBps EIDE interfaces, such as Ultra ATA (also known as IDE /660 and 80MBps Ultra2 SCSI interfaces. A newer hard drive may be backward-compatible with the slower, older interfaces as long as the connectors and cables match. It will not perform as well as it would on a faster interface, but it will work. There may be an adapter card available for your computer, which will make better use of a fast new SCSI or EIDE drive and match its connector type. Form Factor The physical size of the drive is almost as important as its type of interface. Most use the common 3.5-inch form factor, which fits in the empty drive bays of most desktop computers. Obviously, most notebook computers can only use smaller hard drives. Capacity You may have an idea of the hard drive capacity you need, but it is best to buy on the large side. After all, you probably filled up your existing drive more quickly than you expected. If you don't have a second drive or a backup system, I would recommend buying a hard drive twice the size of what you want, then partitioning it in 2. Thus you could use one half for everyday use and the other half for a full system backup. It is not the ideal way of having a backup cause when the hard drive eventually fails to work, you won't be able to access your backup. But at least you'll be able to get back into your system if you install some new software that ends up crashing it. Price Another piece of good news is as capacity and performance improve, prices keep dropping. When you compare hard drives in a certain capacity range, you'll notice that a few extra gigabytes may cost you only $10-$25 more. You'll probably never regret buying a slightly bigger drive than you had planned. Also, look for price breaks at certain midrange capacities that were popular six to 12 months ago but aren't quite cutting-edge anymore. Be aware that a SCSI having the same capacity of an EIDE may cost two or three times more. Performance If you want faster performance, look at the spindle speed. Faster spindle speeds usually mean better performance. Typical desktop hard drives spin at 5,400 or 7,200 rpm. More expensive 10,000 rpm drives increase data transfer rates by sending more data per second past the read/write heads. The main performance figures are the average data transfer rate (higher is better) and the average access time (lower is better). The average data transfer rate tells you how fast the drive will send sequential data to your computer while reading. This is important when loading large files such as photos, or when playing music and video clips. The average access time measures how long it takes for the drive to move its read/write heads and find the right piece of data - It affects the speed of the random accesses of typical productivity applications. Drive manufacturers like to boast about the burst rate, but it's too unpredictable and sporadic to be of much benefit during normal use. Burst data transfer rate refers to finding information which is already in the hard drive's cache buffer. Reliability & Warranty Most manufacturers estimate how many hours or start/stop cycles their drive will survive. They call this estimate the MTBF (mean time between failures). The higher the number the better. Most EIDE drives have an MTBF of 400,000 hours and some SCSI drives go as high as 1.2 million hours. If the drive's MTBF is measured in start/stop cycles (mostly EIDE drives), you'll find 40,000 to 50,000 is fairly standard. Manufacturer warranties vary in what they cover and how long they last. Be sure you understand if the manufacturer intends to give you a new or refurbished drive or if you're expected to wait while they repair yours. Also, note if you have to pay postage when you ship the drive in for repair. As for duration, a one-year or three-year warranty is common with EIDE drives - most SCSI drives come with five-year warranties. If you are a heavy user, stay away from any hard drive with less than a 3 year warranty.  |
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