A hard drives is a key component of every computer, it really doesn't matter whether you're wanted new hard drives or your replacing an old one, understanding the basics will help you make this process much easier. A lot of times replacing the hard drive can be a long daunting task, replacing the drive itself is not difficult, but restoring all the software and updating software can take a lot of time. You may find yourself running out of space so adding a hard drive maybe a better option than replacing one. You may find your hard drive is failing and you will need replace it before you lose everything. And sometimes you might just want performance increase that will help your computer run faster. It really doesn't matter why you need a new hard drive, we will try to explain the different options and pros and cons of purchasing a new one. Please read each section below carefully so you can understand the different parts and options of your new hard drive.

Sizes: The size of your hard drive is one factor to consider when buying a new drive. Bigger is not always better and sometimes slower, knowing what type of drive you have and what your options your computer has will greatly increase your chances of picking the right drive. Hard drives today for desktops range from 320 GB to as high as 2 TB(Tera Bytes), most people rarely use even a third of their drive at any time on the computer. If you're picking the drive to store more information such as text pictures and other things a medium-size drive between 500 GB to 2 TB will be just fine. If you're wanting to store video or HD video the larger drives 2 TB are your best choice. And if you're just changing out the drive or replacing it for a little more room your standard 500 GB to 1 TB is the best choice. Understand your computer has to index the whole drive whether you are use all of it or not, think of your drive is a large warehouse, Mr. CPU has to keep track of every square foot of that warehouse full or not. Installing a much larger hard drive such as a 2 TB, especially on all older system will not only slow it down but may not function properly if the motherboard doesn't fully support that larger drive. The same can be said for a hard drive that is to full, don't fill your drives more than 60%. Don't go overboard on adding an extra drive, in most computers is fairly simple, most motherboards will support least 4 to 6 drives and most computers only currently have 2 installed, one for the hard drive and one for the DVD drive, leaving you 2 to 4 extra slots to add more hard drives or other devices. Take your time think it out and don't go overboard.

Connectors: There are two basic types of connectors that hard drives connect to today, the old-style is an IDE connector and the newer style is an serial ATA a connector or better known as SATA. Some computers can use either or both connector simultaneously. Newer SATA connectors allows a much faster interface from your hard drive to your central CPU, use this type of drive whenever possible below you will find a couple of pictures that will help you identify what your current hard drive is if you have connectors for the newer SATA type drive.

Now that you've decided which type of connector you have an approximate what size of drive you looking for their a few of the things to consider. Let us continue talking about these options.

SSD or Solid State Drives: SSD drives or solid-state drives have been around for a couple of years these new type of drives are very expensive but are coming down in price. The biggest advantage these newer type drives is 2-fold, the first being there no moving parts to wear out and the second is they can be much faster up to 10 times faster than current SATA hard drives. Due to the high cost of these drives currently you only find these in high end systems and people are willing to pay the money for higher performance. But be on the lookout, as prices are coming down all the time some people don't mind spending extra money for the increased performance of these drives. For this article we will kind of leave these out of the mix and create a new article talking more specifically about the pros and cons of SSD drives in the future.

Cables and Connection: So you have decided upon the size of hard drive and what type connector you will use now it's briefly talk about the cables you'll need. Above you will find a picture of both an IDE and SATA cable. Make sure when you order your drive also order an extra cable that is new and unused, if you're just replacing existing drive with the same type of connector you can use your old cable. But for a few bucks you will have peace of mind that your new drive has a new cable and will give you maximum performance. These cables do fail from time to time but it is rare, I do however don't mind paying a few bucks as these cables can be bent and broken if they're not handled carefully. Also consider where you're putting your drive, we have talked about in other articles some hard drives are mounted sideways in the case and require a special right angle cable so that the cable will not be broken or bent when the the case is put back on. These are just a couple of things that you might want to consider about your new hard drive installation. Also understand if you're buying external hard drive they can be looked up one of several ways including USB, FireWire, ESATA or external SATA. We will talk about the pros and cons of these types external connections in another article. Always make sure you have the proper cabling when you purchase a new drive.

Cooling: Cooling your hard drive usually is not too much of a problem. Most hard drives are made out of aluminum and are made to cool on their own, but there are couple of options and things you might want to consider about how hot your hard drive really gets. First of all heat kills a computer, the hotter your hard drive runs the faster it wears out and the greater the chance of getting errors written to the drive. If your hard drive is put in such a place where it gets too hot to touch, then the drive is too hot. Or for mounting one drive on top of the other in the case if your adding an extra hard drive this can cause heat to be stored and not dissipated causing a premature failure. Locating a fan that blows across the drive or some cooling kits the mount right on the bottom of the drive will greatly increase the life of the hard drive and can give you a bit of a speed boast depending on how cool the drive is. So make sure your drives are not too hot to touch this can only be done by taking the cover off and checking them after they run about an hour or so. If you notice your hard drive light running all the time, putting a cooler on it will greatly increase the chance of your drive lasting a much longer and running cooler.

Cache and RPM's: when looking at hard drives you will notice a couple of reoccurring descriptive names when reading about each drive. The first is rpm's or rotations per minute, most hard drives made today run at 7200 rpm's, a few will run as high as 10,000 rpm's. In this case the faster the rpm the faster the hard drive, you will see some the larger 2 TB and newer 3 TB hard drives only run at 5900 rpm's this is due to the fact that they cannot run faster due to how the data is written on the drive. This however does not necessarily mean that the drives is slower, the data is written to the drive much denser than the smaller hard drives, in reality most the time you will find the performance equal to a 7200 RPM drive. What I mean is a drive of the same size the faster rpm is the faster drive. Cache is another thing that can increase the speed of your drive, cache memory allows the drive to do repetitive read and write cycles faster. The more cache you have the more cycles it can do, thus a 32MB cache drive is faster than a drive with only 8MB of cache. So most people say why don't they put the maximum out of cache on each drive, the short answer is cache is very expensive to produce and can add as much as $20-$30 to each drive.

Desktop and Laptop Drives: Now you have learned a little bit about hard drives, let us look at two basic different types or styles. Standard desktop drives or 3.5" inches wide by 5.5" inches long by 1"high, this is a standard size for desktop hard drives. Laptop hard drives are much smaller about the size of a deck of cards being 2.5 " wide by about 3.5" inches long and less than a 1/2" thick. Because of the small nature of laptop drives they will be slower but can still give you excellent performance when needed. There is no advantage to installing a laptop drive in a desktop unit but it wouldn't hurt if you had to. Choosing the right style of drive for the right application will always give you the best results.

SCSI Drives: SCSI drives, pronounced "skuzzy" are mostly used in high-end servers and will not be discussed in this buying section. If you would like more information about SCSI drives please look at our networking section of this website.

Buying Your Drive: Now that you've gotten the information that you need to know about your new hard drive let's talk about actually purchasing it. First of all don't get crazy just based on price a lot of time for a few dollars more you can get a much larger drive. While this is not a huge problem remember us talking about bigger is not always better and can be slower. First consider what you're currently using on your computer now if you're not sure how much are using on your current hard drive, go to my computer and click on the drive and check out how full it is versus the size your current drive. Then think why you're buying the drive and how much you think you really need, remember adding an extra one or two drives the system is fairly easy and most computers are built to do this. Check out websites such as Amazon.com and NewEgg.com and read reviews of each type of drive. Also look at the warranty of the drive your purchasing. Most new hard drives are warranted from 3 to 5 years, now five years sounds awesome but if the drive has bad reviews what's really the point. On both of these websites the reviews will tell you the truth based upon user experience, don't just accept because it gets five out of five stars for egg's that it will be the perfect drive for you. Actually read the reviews and consider the pros and cons of each reviewer and how applies to how you will use your new hard drive. A little time reading and taking a few notes will save you time and money. Once again don't over think it, I know for a fact that a couple models on NewEgg.com have over 2000 reviews, you can pretty much accept the fact that both these models are good drives if they have over 2000 positive reviews.

So there you go all the basic information you need in finding a new hard drive, pretty much as long as you know about what size you want, the type of adapter you have and cable you will need, the rest is pretty much finding a product with a good review in purchasing it. It doesn't have to be difficult to find the perfect drive,

Check out Newegg.com they have lots of Hard Drives and detailed specification on each.

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