Giga-Lost in the world of bytes
Aug 10 '00
Need to upgrade your hard drive?
Have you checked the online sites, or consulted your local computer store?
Have you found that you just don't know what to buy, because the sizes of drives available vary so much?
My first suggestion is determine how much drive space you really need, or would you just prefer to buy the biggest drive possible.
So, let's start with the basic memory divisions:
The basic, lowest part of memory you can have is a bit.
Larger: 8 bits = one byte.
Larger still: 1024 bytes = one kilobyte (kb).
Even larger: 1024 kilobytes = one megabyte (mb).
Really big: 1024 megabytes = one gigabyte (gb).
Huge: 1024 gigabytes = one terabyte (tb).
Note that the size designations are metric divisions of one thousand, one million, one billion, and one trillion, respectively. I really don't think I need to go on, terabyte drives are probably about five to ten years off, memory sizes past that are moot.
If you don't need, say a 45-gb drive, then don't buy one. To keep from running into compatibility issues, I would suggest staying under 8 gigabytes. Although these issues are usually resolved by updating the BIOS, there might not be a BIOS upgrade available and you are stuck with a drive you cannot fully utilize. Since most drives being shipped with new systems are 8 gb or larger, your system will probably support a larger drive. To determine this, either call your tech support, or consult your system documentation. I do not recommend throwing caution to the wind and just buying what ever.
Going back to the 8 gb point, most systems will accept a drive this size, and an 8 gb hard drive is available for not too much money. Besides, if you are adding a drive to supplement your existing drive space, 8 gb should be more than enough.
If you are adding a drive because of a crash, then you might want to consider something larger than 8gb, if your system can accept it.
Another point to make here, especially since the price of hard drives can vary greatly, is to set a budget for how much you will spend. Even setting a budget of $100 or less can snag a nice sized drive for you.
Something that will go along with the price and size of the drive is the type interface. While most IDE interface drives have come down very drastically in price, SCSI interface drives are still notably higher.
I recently had to purchase a new drive; not because I ran out of space, but because the larger of my two hard drives died and took over 75% of my total hard drive space. Don't even get me started on the data I lost (still trying to recover it). So I started my research. If you read some of my other one of my other epinions, about buying bike parts on line, I always suggest doing your research. Lucky, in the computer world, there are search engines for computers and computer parts. The two best that I use are:
www.pricewatch.com and
www.pricegrabber.com
Note: These sites offer price searches other than just computer parts, so keep that in mind for your online shopping in the future.
The first thing I did was to check my system for compatibility issues. Since I built mine recently, there were no issues, so I was free to pursue virtually any drive size I wanted.
Next I set a budget for myself. After looking at finances, I decided that $130 (including shipping) was the maximum I could afford.
Now I got on the web, and started searching. In the process of the search I found that most drives around 30 gb could be had within my budget.
After that, I was simply a short process of finding the cheapest price. I ended up spending $130.53, and the extra fifty-three cents was okay in my book.
I got the drive, formatted it, and I was ready to go.
Note: If you are in the market for a new drive, and you do not normally work on computer hardware; you should consider paying someone to do it, as you may run into master/slave, warranty, drive copying, and technical issues that can hinder the installation process. You can usually find someone who will do it for a very cheap price.
The bottom line is that you don't need the absolute largest drive you can find. Chances are that a larger drive will appear in a month or so, and you might end kicking yourself for not waiting. Besides, why would you want to waste the extra money on something that you won't use? I bought a larger drive because I plan for the future. I have a system that I built, so as technology evolves, I periodically upgrade one component or another, that way I never have to buy a whole new complete system again. And this way, it is actually cheaper to spend $100-200 on a new part.
So remember:
a. Check your system compatibility.
b. Constrain your new drive size accordingly
c. If your have no size constraints, use a set budget.
d. Search online and find the best possible price.
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Epinions.com ID:
Ratt
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Location: Alpine, Tx
Reviews written: 16
Trusted by: 4 members
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