What is a hard drive?

What is a hard drive and what is its function.

What is a hard drive and why do you need inevitably one?

A hard drive is a permanent place where you install and store all your programs and data on your computer.

It is where you install the operating system, an important part without which your computer will be just a set of metals.

All your digital music, your major documentation and all kinds of applications you'll use will be stored in the hard disks. If you loose it, you'll loose, maybe, more than its price, but your whole life.

So it is essential to have it but get a good brand of HDD with relevant specifications.

What type do you need?

It won't be so complicated for you to know. When you are building you own or if you want to upgrade by adding a second hard it's better to go for an internal.

But according to your important, personal or secret documentation you can choose to store them on an external. All the more that external drives are not limited in dimensions like the other.

Now what is the bigger storage capacity you are looking for?

Generally, you can say the bigger the memory capacity, the more data you can store. It's true but you should remember that every GB of capacity will cost you money.

You must be likely to need when making a decision regarding capacity. Do you know that your OS, maybe Windows XP will use about 1.5 GB and a few applications will not take more than 100 MB? So what will you do with all the rest of storage capacity?

As a guide you must consider from 40 to 60GB for a typical home-users. But if your disks will be used to store large amounts of video such as movies then you must go up to 250 GB.

For this purpose and others important above mentioned, external drive will be a better deal. As a matter of fact external models go up to 500 GB which is able to hold almost incalculable files whatever the types.

RPM consideration

Let's consider RPM which concerns the performance of your drive. Really here the more rpm, the faster the disk rotates and the more data it will be able to process. It's opt to you to go for a 5400 rpm, or a 7200, or 10 000 or even 15 000 rpm drives

Drive Interface

There are different interfaces to attach the drive to your motherboard. All you have to do first is to make sure your board will support your drive.

It can be referenced by various terms such as IDE, EIDE, ATA, DMA, UDMA…anyway all of them use the ATA (Advanced Drive Electronic). The best of ATA is the Serial ATA commonly known as SATA which is built in most of motherboards nowadays.

But if you need highest level of performance and reliability, the SCSI (Small computer system interface) is the best choice. However you'll pay out to have it because it is the most expensive.

The other options are the USB and the Firewire, both used with external drives and faster than the other interfaces. Because Firewire drives are really expensive you better go for a USB if price is a major consideration for you.

Now you can go examine the market if you really quite catch what is a hard drive.