| If you need to replace or upgrade your | | | | connector but at a much faster speed. |
| hard drive are some tips you need to | | | | Speaking of which... |
| know before you break out your wallet... | | | | "I feel the need for speed!" |
| Your hard drive is fading into the West. | | | | The first thing you should find out when |
| You hear all manner of grinding sounds | | | | looking at a new hard drive is its |
| coming from it and it's working slower | | | | rotational speed or RPMs (revolutions |
| than an accountant doing an audit. So | | | | per minute). The higher the RPM rating a |
| you grab your wallet and bounce down to | | | | drive has, the faster it will work when |
| the local electronics store to find a | | | | in operation. Speed = better performance |
| replacement. | | | | for both the Windows operating system |
| Whoa! You get inside and are dazzled and | | | | and other software programs. The average |
| dazed by the sheer number of hard | | | | RPM for a hard drive is either 5400 or |
| disks...you didn't think it would be | | | | 7200. |
| this difficult. | | | | Seek Times. Occasionally you may hear |
| All you want is something affordable and | | | | some big time technical person mention |
| reliable but where to start? | | | | the "seek times" for a drive. Seek times |
| Performance vs. Capacity | | | | are measured in milliseconds and are |
| When you are out shopping for a new | | | | basically a gauge of how rapidly a |
| drive these are the two main factors you | | | | software program can locate the data it |
| should take into consideration. | | | | requires on a given hard drive. |
| Performance is based on a computer's | | | | Access times and seek times for our |
| drive controllers (connector types), the | | | | purposes are the same. Most modern home |
| rotational speed and access times of the | | | | computers have a seek time of about 8ms. |
| drive itself. | | | | So a new drive with a seek time of 9ms |
| Capacity is basically a question of | | | | is considered a bit slow. |
| storage space and whether or not your | | | | So when looking at speed find the |
| current system can recognize and handle | | | | highest RPM matched with the lowest or |
| it or not. | | | | average seek time. |
| Know your connector type | | | | Bigger is Better? |
| Modern computers can have several | | | | The next thing you should look at is a |
| different styles of controller | | | | device's size or storage space. You |
| interfaces (connector types) and this | | | | ideally should get as big of a drive as |
| will greatly determine what kind of | | | | you can afford. Hard drive capacity is |
| drive you can fix into your machine. | | | | measured in "megabytes" (million byte |
| The current standard is the IDE or ATA | | | | size: very old drives), "gigabytes" |
| drive. ATA drives can have ATA/66, ATA | | | | (billion byte size: current drives), and |
| 100 or ATA/133 connections. Every ATA | | | | the very newest are "terabyte" drives |
| slot can operate 2 separate devices (2 | | | | (trillion byte size). Like in a house, |
| hard drives, 1 drive/CD or CD/DVD). | | | | you can never have "too much" storage |
| The newest drives have SATA (Serial ATA) | | | | room! |
| connectors but can only run device per | | | | So now you know to get a drive with... |