A guide to buying a new hard drive, with a quick list of what to look for.
"Aren't All Hard Drives the Same?"
Most people don’t think much about hard drives. The average hard-drive customer is either running out of space on a computer or has an old hard drive that failed. Rather than becoming educated, they try to solve the problem ASAP. “Computer not working!” they scream and at confused and frightened Best Buy employees. They run down aisles filled with confusing assortments of computer peripherals. Then, they stop by an array of 100 gigabyte internal drives, salivate, and grab the first one they can and get out of the store.
After all, aren’t all hard drives the same? What advantage would one have over another?
Quite a bit, actually. Modern hard drives vary a great deal, and there are a few quick things to consider when buying one.
Brand
The brand of a hard drive can tell you quite a bit. If it’s a company that’s been making drives for quite a while, it’s reasonable to assume that they know what they’re doing. If the company keeps resurfacing with a new name, or if the drive is generic, don’t buy it. Hard drives aren’t exactly simple to build; the firmware alone must be specific to the microinch or the drive could conceivably fail. You’re not buying laundry detergent here—this is a highly technical device. Only rely on name brands. I always recommend Samsung drives, as they are more dependable than many of the modern manufacturers. Also notable are Maxtor and Western Digital drives; Seagate also makes great, dependable medium, but their entry into the field of data recovery may prove to be a conflict of interest.
If you’re buying an external hard drive, consider how you’ll use it. The primary use, of course, is backup. If this is the case, you might want to shop for a drive that has backup software bundled with it. One notable example is the Maxtor OneTouch II, which can be purchased at a fair price at most online stores (they’re also extremely cheap on Ebay).
Size
If, however, you want a hard drive to store pictures, movies, or music on, you might want to buy based on size. 100 gigabytes will cover most home user needs, but if you’re storing video, go for something bigger. 200 or 300 gigabytes is the recommended hard drive size for storing uncompressed video; music and picture files are much smaller.
If you buy an internal drive, it will likely cost a lot less than an external drive; remember to make the same basic considerations. With an internal drive, 100 gigabytes will more than last most home users; if you’re using your computer for email, internet, a few games, and some mp3s, 100 gigabytes is more than enough. You might want to consider buying an even smaller drive; no use buying what you don’t need. 40 gigabytes will be fine if you want a computer for basic home use. Business hard drives usually don’t need to be any larger than this, either.
Laptop hard drives can also be generally kept small; 20 gigabytes is standard, 40 gigabytes is usually more than enough. If you need more for movies or music, an upgrade to 60 or 80 gigabytes shouldn’t be too much more expensive.
Speed
For home and business PCs, the speed of a drive won’t be incredibly important. 7200 RPM (Rotations Per Minute) is recommended; if the RPM’s far slower than that, your drive might not keep up with you.
While there is nothing wrong with a faster drive, it’s possible that faster speeds increase the chance of drive failure. Unless you have a specific reason to buy a lightning fast drive, don’t buy based on a drive’s RPM.
Connection Type
If you can’t use your drive, it doesn’t work to well as anything else. Maybe a paperweight, and the shiny interior platters make good art projects. Basically, you need to make sure that the type of connection your hard drive supports corresponds to the type of connection that your computer can use. External drives usually use USB 2.0 or Firewire. If you’re computer only has one of these, don’t buy a drive made for the other. Windows computers usually have USB 2.0, but check your computer’s documentation.
Internal drives usually use either SCSI, SATA, or IDE. No, I’m not just putting random letters together. Each of these connection types are quite different, but for our purposes, we’ll just consider the availability of each.
It’s reasonable to assume that SATA drives will be widely accepted in the following years, so if you can, get one of these. At this time, though, SATA isn’t universal, so you’ll probably need an IDE drive. Most consumer motherboards use IDE; though SCSI is faster, it’s not too common. Again, you’re going to need to look at your computer’s documentation. Make sure that the drive you purchase hasn’t been used. A hard drive that has been in use has an exponentially higher failure rate than a new drive. After all, you don’t even know what they did with it.
Setting Up Your New Drive
Remember that once you buy your drive, you need to install it. Don’t worry; major manufacturers have clear, easy to follow instructions on how to set your new drive up. Be careful with your drive, and always discharge static electricity by grounding yourself before handling it. For external drives, you usually just need to install their drivers and/or software and plug them in; for desktop drives, you’ll need to open your computer; for laptop drives, you may need only to open a compartment, or you may need to take the whole device apart. If this is the case, it’s best to let someone with technical experience do this for you.
“Not Again!”
One last piece of advice: remember that absolutely every hard drive will eventually crash. There’s no way to avoid this. The average lifespan of a drive will be about 3-4 years, but at any time they can fail. Backup regularly. Keep the box from your new drive in case the drive fails; nearly every drive manufacturer has a 1-year warranty. If you do forget to backup, remember that it’ll cost you quite a bit to retrieve your data using a data recovery company. Rejoice! You now know how to buy a hard drive. Avoid subjecting it to hard shocks and keep it hooked into a surge protector. Read the documentation that came with it. Treat it right, and it will last you a while. Treat it wrong, and, well, let’s just say you should keep this page bookmarked.