ComputersEquipment

Choosing hard drives for your computer

Despite significant progress in the production of solid-state memory chips, classic hard drives for computers (HDDs, hard disks) are still incredibly popular. This type of accessories is offered by all computer companies. At this stage, loud statements about the imminent abandonment of magnetic disk technology are likely premature.

Available to everyone

Currently, it's not difficult to buy a hard drive for the computer. The price of this component ranges from $ 40 for a model of 250 GB to 600 $ for 6 TB of external performance. We have provided indicative data, so the real state of things may differ in one direction or another. Dividing the price of the volume, it is easy to calculate the cost of one gigabyte of disk space. So, its lower limit is only 0.16 $. Due to such a low price, hard disks for the computer are still in demand, despite the availability of more technologically advanced solid-state SSD-drives on sale. In the latter, recalculation of the cost of gigabytes gives $ 1.25, which is several times more than for traditional hard drives. Therefore, most users in the system blocks have hard disks for the computer, using the principle of magnetic recording. Next, we will indicate the main characteristics that should be paid attention to the buyer of such drives.

How are hard disks for a computer

These devices are designed for long-term storage of recorded information. Unlike CDs, the technology implemented in hard drives allows tens of thousands of cycles of writing / reading. A layer of magnetic coating is applied to the surface of the dielectric disks located inside. When the spindle of the electric motor rotates, the resulting airflow raises the beam with the head block above the discs. At the command of the controller, the heads are positioned at the desired point and the area is magnetized. Subsequently, the recorded information can be considered, turning into a sequence of zeros and ones, i.e., a digital code. The above diagram is simplified for understanding.

Volume of the computer hard disk

One of the key characteristics of drives is their volume. While in the bulk of devices it is measured in gigabytes, but solutions have already appeared, where manufacturers moved to terabytes. The volume shows how much data can be written to the hard drive. As a rule, the bigger it is, the better. Be aware that not all motherboards support terabyte hard drives.

Rotation

Performance HDD largely depends on the speed with which the engine rotates the shaft on which the disks are fixed. The standard values are 5400, 7200 and 10,000 rpm. Usually, the drive runs at a certain speed, although some models (WD) can switch between base values. The higher the speed, the faster the recording and reading of data. At the same time, a small number of revolutions allows the device to work more quietly, economically and with less heat.

Interface

To connect to the board, a special cable is used, sometimes called an interface cable. There are several types of standard protocols that are used for connection. The most widespread are IDE and SATA (in revisions 1, 2, 3). IDE uses a wide cable, consisting of 40 or 80 conductors, currently new mass devices with this interface are not produced. Among SATA, the third version is the most technologically advanced (with internal data transfer of about 6 Gbit / s). The versions are compatible, that is, the SATA-1 hard drive can work with the SATA-3 card and vice versa (albeit with limitations).

Cache

The specifications always indicate the amount of available buffer memory of the hard drive. It varies from 8 to 64 megabytes. The higher this value, the more likely that the data requested from the disk will be detected by the controller in the cache, they will reduce the number of head movements and increase the overall speed.

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