Your computer’s hard disk drive (HDD) is just as important as any other piece of computer hardware, it stores all of your data on it, an unlike RAM it holds onto your data even after you shut down your computer. And for everyone, the main reason why we have a computer is so it can store our extra MP3s, games, movies, etc. Most hard drives come in three different interfaces, IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics), SATA (Serial ATA, Serial Advanced Technology Attachment), and SCSI (Small Computer System Interface). SCSI is mainly used for servers and special RAID arrays for big companies. The price of a SCSI drive is one of the main reasons why consumers don’t have them in their home, one SCSI drive can run you up several hundred dollars, even though they are the fastest out of all three. IDE drives are the slowest of the three and have been around for the longest, most computers after 2004, began using Serial ATA drives, because they offer big speed improvements over IDE.

Hard drive size is the biggest factor when looking at a hard drive, most computer hard drives vary from 40GBs to 1TB (Terabyte, or 1000GBs).

Computer Hard drive speed is determined by RPMs, which is how many times the hard drive spins per minute, most common speed is 7200RPMs, while enterprise hard drives and some high end user hard drives spin at 10,000 and 15,000 RPMs, also computer hard drive cache speed is a another thing that effects hard drive speed. Most computer hard drives have a 16MB cache or an 8MB cache, and newer hard drives are being released with a 32MB cache.

Factors to consider when buying a computer hard drive:

Computer Hard Drive Size: Get a hard drive with at least 128GBs of hard drive space. Space gets eaten up very easily. My music collection easily reaches over 20GBs, and if you to store good quality movies, each movie can run up to 4GBs, and that’s not even with HD quality, so be sure to get a hard drive with enough space or you’ll be upgrading to another one quickly.
Computer Hard Drive Interface: To keep up with the times make sure you purchase a SATA drive, it will give you the most performance for the buck, and they’re not too expensive either.
RPM: When comparing two computer hard drives make sure you get the hard drive that spins at the most RPMs, you won’t regret it, 7200RPM hard drives offer significant performance boosts over 5400RPM hard drives, and so on.

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