Size Does Matter!!!!
Jun 05 '00
I have read through quite a few of the Epinions on this matter and almost everyone one of them advocates the idea that bigger is better. I going to tell you that this is not always the case. The size of the drive you should acquire should depend mostly on what you intend to use it for.
I work in the IS department for a credit union. I have considerable experience in this area as I have to assist in maintaining and replacing the ones in our systems and our employees often ask advice for their personal PCs. Now that I have established some credentials let's go.
For the average user in a networked environment, a hard drive needs only to be able to hold the operating system and the local components of the software necessary to run the business or home office. I know this is for the typical user and I will address this as well. These users obviously need very little hard drive over and above what is needed for the operating system. This is obviously a small category of home users, but we now have our first 5% of the users out of the way.
Now for another 5 - 10 % of the users, the power users. These are the internet surfing, graphics oriented type of user who need massive amounts of storage for their files. For these users I do advocate the idea of bigger is better. These users not only need more hard drive space but also generally have a good idea of how to set it up for their uses.
Now for the vast majority of the users out there. These people use their computer for correspondence, light internet surfing, term papers games and the like. For these people I recommend a modest sized hard drive. Unless you are a serious gamer who needs to have one hundred and eighty three games installed on your computer, a 6.4 to 8.4 GB hard drive is far more than sufficient. Most of these users will not come anywhere near filling this drive up. For the few that do however, there are yet more advantages. The 16 GB hard drive that they could have purchased two years ago, now costs about a third of what it did then. Additionally, this user now has the additional advantage of knowing their system far better than they did when they purchased the computer. They usually have a better understanding of concepts like partitioning, defrag, scandisk and the like. Now they can get the bigger hard drive they need and optimize it for their usage.
So I am not saying that the bigger is better idea is totally wrong. There are some instances where it is a great idea. For the average user, however, it is a bad idea as it is simply wasted space and in most cases, if they do eventually need it, misused space. The average user is far better off, buying what they need into the near future and then buying the larger drive after they have a better understanding of how they will use it. Thank you all for taking the time to read my thoughts on this subject. I hope this has helped at least some users out there.
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