Buying a hard disk or thinking to upgrade? Then you have come to the right place.There are many factors to consider before buying a hard disk.
Interface:
There are three types of interfaces available for hard disk’s:
1) PATA
2) SATA
3) SATA2
Currently, only SATA2 hard disks are available in the market. And you should buy that only if you are thinking to upgrade. For desktops, 3.5″ hard disks are available. And for laptops, 2.5″ hard disks are available. Clearly speaking, PATA interface is the slowest interface, SATA interface is fast compared to PATA and SATA2 interface is the fastest. Data transfer speed of SATA interface could be 1.5 GBps & SATA2 interface could be 3.0 GBps. Thats why, if you are buying a new hard disk, buy only SATA2 hard disk.
Size:
For a majority of users, size is the most important factor. Many people just ask the size of it and buy it. Hard disks are available in 80 GB, 120 GB, 160 GB, 250 GB, 320 GB, 500 GB, 1 TB (Tera Byte), etc sizes. If you are upgrading or buying a new hard disk I would recommend 500 GB hard disk. But if download more or think that it is future proof to buy 1 TB hard disk, then you can go for 1 TB also. Because nowadays, 1 TB hard disks are also not very expensive.
RPM:
Many manufacturers quote the RPM very often, its the most commonly used term. Simply stating, the more the RPM, the better. Hard disks come in 5400 rpm, 7200 rpm, 10,000 rpm & 15,000 rpm. It doesn’t mean you have to buy hard disks with 15,000 rpm because I previously said the more the better. RPM means revolutions per minute. This is an impotant apect if you are buying a hard disk. The faster the drive platter spins, the faster the data transfers to the read head. Hard disks with 7200 rpm & 10,000 rpm are most common. There is also a price difference between these two rpm’s. I mean hard disks with 10,000 rpm are more costly compared to 7200 rpm. If you are buying a new hard disk, I recommend hard disk with 7200 rpm & if you have some extra cash then you can definitely go for hard disks with 10,000 rpm. Your choice. But there’s not much performance difference between these two.
Buffer:
This size refers to the buffer size or cache size of the hard disk. Large buffer improves the performance of the hard disk. But not to a very large extent. You should consider buying one with 8 MB buffer minimum. There are 16 MB or 32 MB buffer size hard disks are also available.
You can refer here for the prices or if you just want to know about different companies & their sizes, rpm, etc. There are many different companies like Hitachi, Seage, Western Digital, Lacie, etc.
SSD hard disks are also available in the market. SSD means Solid State Drive. Some advantages of SSD’s are that they are small, energy efficient and produces lesser heat. So they are best suited for laptops. The prices of SSD are very high for now. You can call SSD hard disk as the most expensive hard disks.
Anonymous says
Nice guide. Now I know what to look for in a hard disk, other than capacity.
comp@ddict says
^^There are five contenders:-
1. Seagate
2. Hitachi
3. Western Digital
4. Maxtor
5. Samsung
I like the Seagate brand for it’s price and awesome read/write speeds.
comp@ddict says
Nice article.
For eg:-
Seagate Barracude 7200.12 has 32MB Cache buffer afaik but the 500GB costs Rs. 3,200, so it’s a gr8 buy really.
Saqib says
Yes, u r right. But Seagate Barracuda has some problems, so I’ll recommend to stay away from it. By the way, my personal favorite brand is Hitachi.