Perhaps the largest mistake people make when building their computer(s) is to underestimate the importance of the hard disk drive (HDD). In our modern society, bigger is synonymous with better, so when you go to buy a hard drive you look at how "big" it is, its data capacity. But is that all you ought to be thinking about when purchasing your hard drive?
Like every other part of your computer, the HDD is far complex a method to explain in any kind of detail here, but hopefully by the finish of this article you will know what to look for when you go to buy your new hard drive.
There are primary aspects to look at in a hard drive (in order of importance):
Rotational frequency & average seek time
Buffer size
Internal/external transfer rates
Capacity
Rotational frequency has become an immense selling point (5400/7200/10000/15000RPM) recently, so you ought to not have much difficulty finding out what the rotational frequency of your HDD is when you go to buy it. Now of work the faster it spins, the faster it can read from the disk (there is other advantages also), but be aware that the faster it spins, the more wear is put on the drive, & the more likely it is to encounter errors & malfunctions later in life. Hard drives are much the only systems within your computer that have moving parts (CD-ROM, floppy disk drives, & fans also have moving parts, but they are all cheap & in the event that they break you won't lose all the data you have accumulated over the work of owning your computer, be positive to back up your data regularly!).
In case you know anything about physics or engineering, then you know that moving parts produce friction & wear, & a faster spinning platter (the part that holds the data & spins) means more friction, & therefore more wear on your drive. Of work the faster it spins the faster it can read data from the platter. So what are you able to do? Well again you backup your data as much as feasible & you get the quickest spinning drive money can buy (which is 7200RPM for ATA devices (the sort you are purchasing) & 15000RPM for SCSI & some Serial ATA devices (you might get Serial ATA that depends on your motherboard)). So look for a "7200RPM" label on the drive you are thinking of getting, it is important!
The "buffer" I am referring to is the transfer buffer that temporarily stores data to read from or write to the hard drive. The reason for this is that the bus (data channel between the hard drive & the motherboard) can only handle a lot data at a time, & it takes a long time for the data to be found & retrieved from a platter (random seek time), so it takes an immense chunk of the requested data & stores it in a rapid data buffer to be sent at the bus's convenience. So with a bigger buffer you can queue more data for transfer over the bus without having to keep sending requests to slowly find more data from the platters. Some newer drives come with as much as 8MB of buffer capacity, but it is more common to see or 4MB. Usually a drive with an immense amount will use that as a selling point & print it on the box/website; otherwise you can assume it is a 2/4MB buffer. My advice is to find with as much as you can afford.
Now for the transfer rates you are going to need to do some searching, the best way to find these numbers is to go to the manufacturer's net site & look at specification sheet for the model you are looking to buy (actually this is the best way to get all the data I have talked about so far). thing to look out for is that you may read something that says 133MB/s or ATA/133 or SATA150 or 150MB/s, & these are not the numbers you are looking for, those numbers portray the bus connecting the hard drive to the motherboard, & are theoretical peak numbers, which tell us virtually nothing. Also, in the event you are purchasing a Maxtor, don't bother looking up actual transfer rates, as Maxtor is apparently afraid to release such data. Not to say Maxtor's are bad drives, actually Maxtor has risen to the top in terms of technical support & they are much more willing to replace broken drives than some other companies, which is important since some ridiculously giant amount (something like0 or 15%) of hard drives are either dead on arrival or die within the first few weeks of use. As with the last points, when taking a glance at transfer speeds (in the event you can find them) always try to choose with the highest numbers you can afford.
Notice that the first of the major aspects were all speed related? That was done intentionally to give you a sense of the importance of speed in the hard drive, because they are slow creatures, & for your betting experience you don't need an immense hard drive a lot as a speedy. To increase speed substantially more you can set up a RAID, which is a network of hard drives which (in RAID0 mode) share portions of the same data, such that accessing data takes 1/n time (n = number of hard drives attached) compared to hard drive. To do this you need a hardware RAID chipset, which are often included on higher-end mainboards.
Finally, capacity is an unnecessary nicety. The smallest hard drives you can buy today that are still within those higher speed classes are all about 30GB, which is over for your games. But since games are not everything, & in the event you happen to be an iTunes member or like to download anime then you will need some additional space. So I would recommend getting something between 60 & 120GB, any more & you are going to be paying through your teeth, any less & you might be looking to buy a supplementary hard drive in a couple years. &, oh yeah, 300GB hard drives from Maxtor are out, but they are comparatively slow, so I would not recommend getting for betting, I am liking to stick to single platter drives (40-100GB usually), as they produce less heat & are less likely to break down on me.
That is all you need to know in order to make a sensible choice when upgrading your hard drive or purchasing for a new computer. Of work there are a lot of other resources on the net in the event you would like more detail on the inner working of hard drives.
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