Understanding Hard Drives

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Storing data on a hard drive is easy but what is a hard drive and what types are there?  

Hard Drives:

The hard drive is a high capacity magnetic storage device which stores all your data and software including your Operating System. If your hard drive fails for some reason it is possible you could lose all your data. So it is a good idea to routinely backup your files, data, and your system if you have that option. Hard drive sizes are typically measured in GigaBytes. The larger the number, the more applications and games you can have installed. 

There are two types of hard drives that can be used in your PC; SCSI (Small Computer System Interface) and IDE (Integrated/Intelligent Drive Electronics). Both types of drives have the same basic hardware structure. The platters, spindle motor, heads, and head actuator are inside the drive, sealed from the outside. The platters are the disks inside that actually store the information. Depending on how many platters you have determines the size of your hard drive.

The cost of IDE hard drives over the years have dropped and the speed has increased, thus making them the more popular choice for today's PCs. Speed is an important part of your hard drive and is talked about in RPM (revolutions per minute). There are two common speeds used for IDE hard drives, 5400rpm and 7200rmm and two more speeds used for SCSI hard drives, 10000rpm and 15000rpm. The higher the speed, results in quicker access for the data to be retrieved.

The size of your hard drive is the next most important factor for your PC. Older hard drives are usually talked about in terms of megabytes(mb) and newer hard drives are talked about in gigabytes(gb), which translates into 1000 megabytes. An average hard drive for most computer systems these days is around 20gb in size, but can vary anywhere from 10gb to Terabytes (1000 gigabytes) in size depending on specific needs and uses.