Size does matter
May 07 '00
Whether looking at the spec of a new machine, or purchasing an upgrade for an existing machine, a good rule of thumb to keep in mind with hard drives is that size does matter. While this isn't the only important factor in choosing a hard drive, it is a good starting place. This epinion will assume that the hard drive being selected is for home use, and that the cost of SCSI exceeds the benefit from higher performance.
Why Is Size So Important?
Well, aside from the obvious, that a 20 Gig hard drive can hold more programs and data than a 9 Gig hard drive, there is something else to consider that normally goes hand in hand with increased size, that is increased speed. If you look at seek rates and data transfer specs. on large hard drives, you will find they are almost uniformly faster than smaller drives. (There are exceptions such as when the smaller drive has a faster rotation speed, i.e. 7200RPM vs 5200RPM). You may ask your self why this is true?
Well to understand the relationship between size and speed, you have to think about the mechanics of a hard drive. Read/Write Head(s) pass over the top of platter(s) coated with a magnetic material. A thin cushion of air separates the Read/Write head from the disk platter. Standard modern IDE hard drives have up to 3 platters in them. Movement of the read/write head among the radius of the disk is controlled via motors in the hard drive. You may ask yourself what this to do with hard drive size? Well, how can the maximum capacity of a hard drive go up without the physical dimensions of it changing? Increased Data Density. More bytes per square inch of hard drive surface is the secret to larger hard drives. Since there are physical processes involving movement of read/write heads, increased data density directly relates to faster performance. i.e. The read/write heads have to move less to get the same data.
The other factor in hard drives that has to do with speed is rotational speed. You really should get a 7200RPM IDE drive. You will be amazed at the difference in performance that a fast hard drive makes.
So, to bring this Epinion back on topic ( of course I would focus on performance ), how does this relate to the best size of hard drive to get. Well, for maximum data density, all hard drive manufacturers are licensing IBM's magneto-optical technology. If you see a hard drive that is 13 Gigabytes or larger and is 7200RPM, you will know you are getting the fastest hard drives available. Since the trend in the Windows world is for the operating system and applications to continuously consume more resources, having a minimum of 13GB isn't a bad idea anyway. Power users will probably want to aim for the IBM 20.5 GB 7200 RPM Deskstar. If it starts to fill up, you can alway use a Promise Fastrak IDE RAID Card (or better yet, hack an Promise ATA-66 controller into a Fastrak, but that is a topic for another review.) When you consider that a 13GB 7200 RPM hard drive can be had for about $130, they are within almost anyones budget.
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
stevelarrison
|
 - Top 500 |
|
Member: Steve Larrison
Location: Scottsdale, Az. USA
Reviews written: 171
Trusted by: 198 members
About Me:
Beer, the answer to, and the cause of all life's problems.
|
|
|
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.