Hard drive is one of the most critical component of your computer that stores your operating system, programs, and data. Buying the most appropriate Hard Drive for your system is an important decision.
Before shopping for a hard drive, you must first know why do you need a hard drive and how would you use it.
Storing and editing digital contents.
If you need more storage space in your PC to store, edit or play digital contents such as videos, photos, musics and games, you’ll probably need an internal hard drive with high rotational speed of 7200rpm and high capacity of at least 250GB. These internal hard drive can be Parallel ATA (PATA) or Serial ATA (SATA) interfaces. You should opt for Serial ATA, the newer of the two interfaces, if your motherboard supports that connection/interface.
Backup-ing data files
If you need more storage space to store data that is not used often or to backup data files, you’ll need an external hard drive with normal rotational speed of 5400rpm and adequate capacity depends on how much data will be stored. There are one or more types of interface connector to link the external hard drive to a computer. These interfaces are USB 2.0, FireWire 400, FireWire 800, and external SATA flavors. You should opt for external SATA flavors, the fastest of the three interfaces, if your motherboard supports that connection/interface. You can put it in a safe place when using it as backup media.
Transferring or sharing data files
If you want to transfer data from one PC to another or to share media files among multiple PCs, you’ll also need an external hard disk, but with higher rotational speed of 7200rpm that offer faster reading and writing speeds as you’ll use it often. Since you’ll only use it to transfer data, but not store data permanently, you don’t need a high capacity drive. A drive with capacity of 250GB is more than enough to transfer any data files. By this way you can save lots of money.
Sharing storage among multiple computers
If you need a centralized storage for your network where you can throw up and share your images, videos and files, consider buying a network-attached storage device(NAS). NAS devices are continually improving, and can be a convenient way to store photos, videos, music, and other files that available to everyone on your network. When choosing a NAS device, the rotational speed and capacity are optional depend on how would you use it.
