The hard drive is the computer hardware responsible for storing data in your computer. Every bit of information inputted in your computer is stored in the hard drive, and the data remains there, even if it is turned off.
Hard Drive Characteristics
When planning to purchase a hard drive, there are two factors you have to consider:
Speed of the hard drive
The faster the hard drive is able to obtain its stored data, the greater is its speed. If your computer has a fast hard drive, you will be able to do everything quickly, for example, faster loading of files, quicker moving of files, etc. The speed of a hard drive is measured by the so called ‘revolutions per minute’, RPM for short.
Capacity of the hard drive
The amount of space that your hard drive has for storage is known as its capacity. The capacity of a hard drive is measured in what techie people call: ‘gigabytes.’ The greater the amount of Gigabyte a hard drive has, the more music and video files may be stored.
Pricing Considerations
Computer hardware prices, to be specific, hard drive prices actually vary greatly. Sometimes, a 160 GB hard drive may only be expensive by $10 compared to an 80 GB hard drive. When searching for the right hard drive, look into the storage space, especially when you have a lot of heavy files to store. Take note though that the bigger the amount of storage space, the more costly the hard drive will be. Some people may be after the speed of the hard drive more than its capacity. A hard drive with a speed of 10,000 RPM usually does the trick.
A computer is usually able to hold up to 4 hard drives, sometimes even more. If you have future expansions in mind, make sure that your computer hardware enables support of more than a couple of hard drives.
