Size is not the only thing that counts
Jun 08 '01
The Bottom Line Pickup a fast drive that will work with your computer. Buy as big as you can afford and please, buy a brand, its well worth it.
Hard Drive sizes have grown and prices have shrinked over the last few years. Hard drive costs can be as low as $1 per 300MB. That’s extremely inexpensive compared to the prices about 5 years ago. Also, speeds of IDE drives have gotten faster and faster, there is no reason for normal users to spend extra bucks on a skuzzy (SCSI) drive.
What type of IDE do you have?
There are 3 main different IDE speeds that Today’s consumers will encounter. That is ATA-33, ATA-66 and ATA-100 (Also DMA) You will have to check your motherboard to see which technology you have. Hard Drives are also sold in these speeds, ATA-33 being the slowest. If you have ATA-100, you should buy an ATA-100 capable Hard drive, although most are backward compatible.
You should also know that the cables for these technologies are different. ATA-33 doesn’t need to have a shielded cable while ATA-66 & ATA-100 need them. Therefore, if you are upgrading your hard drive (and motherboard) you will need to replace the cables. Different speeds also have different amount of pins.
Choosing a Brand
There are many hard drive manufacturers out there. I have had great experience with Maxtor, IBM and Seagate. I have also used Western Digital’s drives but I have had endless problems with their Cavier line. Seagate’s Medallist line runs extremely well. Maxtor’s Diamond Max is also a great choice. Also IBM’s Dextar line is very reliable.
Please, remember that your hard drive contains so much valuable data and if it crashes, its very hard to recover the data. Spend the extra bucks and buy a good brand, it will surely be worth it.
How much space do you need?
With hard drive sizes getting so big and the prices so low, there is absolutely no reason not to buy a big drive. You can get a 20 Gigabyte Maxtor for $100. A 30 Gb IBM runs for about $130. Seagate has a 40gb drive for $135. These are excellent prices.
Basically, the size of your hard drive is limited by the size of your pocket. Choose a drive which you know will atleast meet all your needs.
Speed of the Hard Drive
There are many things that affect the speed of your hard drive. First off, the overall speed of you computer does have an effect on speed, so to does the quality of your motherboard, e.t.c.
One of the main things affecting speed is the pipeline of the hard drive to the computer. That is what I mentioned early, the ATA-33, 66 or 100. If you are buying a new motherboard, try to get one which supports ATA-100, e.g. the 815e chipset for Pentium 3 owners supports ATA-100.
Another thing that affects speed is the disc spin rate. Hard drives consists of a disc which rotates and a needle which writes/reads data to this disc. The discs are split up into sectors, and information is written into these sectors. There are many sectors, and these sectors are small, therefore, files stores are spread out through many sectors. That means that the needle must move to different parts of the disc to access certain files.
The speed at which the disc spins is rated in RPM (Revolutions Per Minute). The faster the disc spins, the quicker the needle can access different part of the drive which means faster write/read times. Look for speeds of atleast 5400 RPM. But it will be helpful if you pay the extra buck and pick up a 7200 RPM drive, trust me, its worth it.
You should also look at the buffer capacity on the drive. The buffer is a fast storage space where data is placed before it is actually written/read by a program. Most drives come with atleast 2MB buffer space which is sufficient, but 4MB will help improve performance.
Another thing to look out for is the seek time on the drive. This is the amount of time it takes for the drive to start up. The shorter the seek time means you drive will access faster. 8-7 Millisecond seek times are pretty good.
Anything else?
Look out for warranties. You should get atleast a 3 year warranty on your drives. I have had great experience with Seagate, they provide software which can tell if your drive has died or not and has an instant RMA service.
Many drives don’t come bundled with cables, so beware of this. Its really a pain when you open a box and discover no cable and need to go out and get a cable after the fact. Read the box and if it doesn’t say cable included, it probably doesn’t have one.
When you connect the drive, try to connect the hard drive on its own port. That is, if you have a CDROM drive, do not hook the hard drive to that cable. Most computers come with atleast 2 IDE ports. Use 2 cables, use one for the cdrom and one for the hard drive. This will help maximize speed. Also, if you have 2 hard drives and a cdrom, put the 2 hard drives on the same cable and the cdrom on the other.
Happy shopping!
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adamadi
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"The more people smoke herb, the more Babylon fall" Bob Marley
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