When buying a hard drive it is important to understand the hard drive is suitable for your uses and has or does not have the options you may or may not need. Unfortunately with hard drive technologies changing everyday it is can be sometimes confusing and frustrating when looking to purchase a hard disk drive. I've tried to compile some information on these issues and included some common Hard Drive problems and how to resolve them! Interface When looking to buy a hard drive the first and most important consideration is the Interface the hard drive uses to communicate with the computer.You will need to check this in your motherbaord manul or conatct your PC manufacturer. IDE/ATAPI/ATA - One of the more commonly found hard disk drives and used with IBM compatible computers is IDE or ATA. This is generally an easy to install and customized interface. The disadvantages being that you will have to configure your IDE device with Jumpers to tell the motherboard where ther IDE device is located on the cable. Found in common speeds of 66, 100 and 133 MB/s. Each IBM compatible computer has the availability for a maximum of four IDE devices, these devices can range from Hard Drives to CD-ROM drives. If considering purchasing an IDE/ATAPI/ATA hard disk drive verify that there available locations for the drive to be connected too. SCSI – Another commonly used interface, SCSI devices are found in Apple computers as well as some IBM computers, and are even more common in Server machines due to their fast speeds and reliability. The SCSI interface is generally a faster solution when compared to IDE/ATAPI, however in some cases can be more difficult to install. To install a SCSI hard disk drive you must have a SCSI card and an available connection on the SCSI cable connecting to the SCSI card. It is important to remember if you have a Proprietary SCSI card such as a SCSI card included with the Iomega Jazz drive, this SCSI card may not always allow your hard disk drive to work. External (USB / Fire wire / Parallel) - Several external solutions are also available, these include but are not limited to USB Hard disk drives, Fire wire Hard disk drives and Parallel Hard disk drives. When considering an external hard disk drive it is important to look at the speed difference, for transferring data to and from the hard disk drive. In addition for these external drives to function properly you must also have the available connection for the drive to be connected too. Important to remember is that USB and paralell interfaces are MUCH slower than IDE or SATA and probably should not be considered as a long term solution! SATA 1 & 2 Unlike IDE which uses parallel signaling, SATA uses serial signaling technology. Because of this the SATA cables are thinner than the ribbon cables used by IDE hard drives. SATA cables can also be longer allowing you to connect to more distant devices without fear of signal interference. There is also more room to grow with data transfer speeds starting at 150 MB/s with SATA 1, and with SATA 2 recently out, this brings speeds to a theoretical 300 MB/s transfer rate. Serial ATA drops the master/slave shared bus of PATA, giving each device a dedicated cable and dedicated bandwidth. While this requires twice the number of host controllers to support the same number of SATA devices, at the time of SATA's introduction this was no longer a significant drawback. Size The hard drive is used to store programs such as games or applications, as well as digital music and movies. It's also used to store any files you create. Today, most systems ship with a minimum of 60 GB of hard disk space. That's a decent amount, but if you have more space available, you'll find a way to fill it. I'd recommend staying away from anything smaller than 60 Gigs as 60 GB is the baseline drive size. If you want to go crazy with storage space, go for a 120 or 160 GB drive. You may want to compare the price of that against two separate 80 GB drives, so if a drive dies on you, you don't lose everything. Nowadays, hard drives are usually pretty solid if they are kept cool and well fed with clean power, but beware if you hear clicking noises or squeaking that gets louder, this usually indicates a dying Hard Disk! Spin Rate Drives that spin faster generally have a higher data transfer rate. Whatever you do, don't go for a drive that spins slower than 5400 RPM. If you do, you'll notice that it is slow. Most major build-to-order system vendors ship mainly 7200 RPM drives in their standard configurations. If you don't see the spin rate advertised, then ask. The strange thing about the 5400 vs. 7200 RPM is that when hard drive makers fit more data on the same drive with newer models, a new 5400 RPM drive may perform exactly the same as an old 7200 RPM drive since the same amount of data spins by the drive read heads. If you go with 7200 RPM, you are guaranteed a certain level of performance, but you may not always get a speedup compared to new model 5400 RPM drives. Remember, a larger hard drive will not make your system any faster or slower unless you are low on available disk space, but a drive with Ultra ATA/100 or ATA/133 and a 7200 RPM spin rate will pretty much guarantee decent hard drive performance. Other Things to Consider Below is a listing of some other important considerations to look at when purchasing a Hard Drive: Warranty – How long is the warranty and what does it cover? Try not to get anything lower than a Three Year warranty. While some Hard Drives last years and years, some don't and is worth YOUR money to get a drive with the most warranty possible. Support – Is the technical support number a free number is it open 24 hours 7 days a week. Like most people, 24/7 supprot is preferable but is not always available. Don't sweat it, 24/7 support is'nt entirely necessary and chances are you wont need the support anyway. But the last thing you want to do is ring Singapore from America with a problem and having them put you on hold for 3 hours! Included Components – Verify that the hard Drive that you are purchasing comes with the needed components to install the drive. Generally Hard Drives included from the manufacturer will include, IDE / ATA/66-100 Cable, standard drive rails, instructions and diskette for installation, unless you get a OEM version which generally includes nothing but the Hard Drive itself and a clever little Anti-Staic bag. Transfer rates – The Internal transfer rate is the rate at which the hard disk drive can take the data from the platter to the internal cache or read buffer. The External Transfer rate is the rate at which the hard disk drive can then take the data in the internal cache or read buffer to the computer memory. S.M.A.R.T. – S.M.A.R.T. is a new technology used to help predict possible problems with the Hard Drive. While this is not entirely necessary it may come of some use to you. Buffer Size - Generally all new Hard Drives come with a standard 2MB buffer and is suited for everyday home and office use. 8MB versions are also available but are usually gearded towards power users that demand more performance. If you are unsure on which to get, just stick with 2MB buffers. Price The price range can vary depending upon what type of interface the drive uses (IDE / SCSI / USB / SATA), you should expect to pay more for SCSI drives as they are generally released before IDE drives and are a faster technology. In addition to the interface, the faster the RPM on the drive is the more you should also expect to pay. 5400 RPM IDE or less - Expect to pay $50.00 to $200 7200 RPM IDE or greater - Expect to pay $80 and higher SCSI DRIVE - Expect to pay $200.00 and higher Plus if you don't have a SCSI card, expect to pay extra. What Next? Once you have reviewed the appropriate information and believe that you are ready to make a purchase of a new Hard Drive, verify that the source you are purchasing the device from is a reputable source and you have reviewed my thread on what to look for when purchasing. All thats left is the installation but i'll leave that for another day!
Common Problems Common HDD Problems If you’re like most people, you have either already ran out of space on your hard drive, or you are soon to do so. And you’ll probably go out and get a new hard drive. The Retail ones usually come with software that set the drive up for you, by partitioning and formatting it. The OEM ones usually don’t. That's where some problems arise. "My 30GB Drive is only showing 2GB." What gives? The problem for that is usually in the Operating System. The first version of Windows 95, for example, uses a file system called FAT16. That file system limits the size of the hard drive that is visible to the OS to only 2GB. So when you try to make that larger, it won’t let you. Simple as that. You either must partition your hard drive into several 2GB partitions, or upgrade to an OS that with a file system that will support more than 2GB on a partition, (such as FAT32 or NTFS) Another reason is because your BIOS has limits. 386 and 486 and lower end Pentium systems have limits of 512MB. Some Pentium Systems are limited to 2GB, and some are limited to 8GB. It’s all in how the BIOS address the clusters on the Hard drive. It can be corrected with software, that comes with most new drives, like Western Digital’s. They take over where your real BIOS can’t perform, and then addresses the hard drive correctly. "My hard drive says it’s 40GB, but Windows is saying it’s 37.27GB. Where’d that 2.73GB of space go?" Well, that problem is all in the numbers. The makers of the hard drive count 1MB as 1,000,000 Bytes. Windows counts 1MB as 1,048,576 bytes. That adds up when you are talking 40,000MB! "What is FAT32?" "Should I switch to FAT32?" "Can I switch to FAT32 and keep my data on the drive." "What OS's support FAT32." Versions of Windows95 older than OSR2, as well as any DOS version, operate on a file system called FAT16. The existence of large hard drives has led to large partition sizes, which mean large cluster sizes and wasted space. Under FAT16, a smaller cluster size is better, because a small file takes up a whole cluster if there is even one byte in it; the leftover space is called "slack." FAT32 changed that. FDISK in Windows 95 and 98, will only allow you to put FAT32 on drives larger than 512MB. Inside FDISK, you must enable "large disk support," to choose FAT32. After exiting FDISK and rebooting, FORMAT the drive. NOTE: that you must manually reboot after exiting FDISK, this is not automatic as in previous versions of FDISK. If you do not reboot between FDISK'ing and FORMATting, you will get strange-looking error messages. As always, when you FDISK a drive, you will loose all data. But there are programs out there, like the one that comes with Windows 98, and Partition Magic, that will convert your drive to FAT32 without loosing your data. NTFS has features to improve reliability, such as transaction logs to help recover from disk failures. To control access to files, you can set permissions for directories and/or individual files. NTFS files are not accessible from other operating such as DOS. With NTFS which is integrated into Windows XP, you don't need to do all the hokey pokey needed with FAT16/32. XP comes with a partitioning software and will usually automatically select the best formatting procedure needed based on the size of the drive. For large applications, NTFS supports spanning volumes, which means files and directories can be spread out across several physical disks. Why is my Hard Drive Clicking? If you are hearing a clicking sound from your drive, then chances are it's either very sick or it's dying. When you hear this sound, it's time to backup your data anyway possible and just hope your drive doesn't die on you! That being said, i hope your Hard Drive upgrades and future problems will be easily corrected
