Rpm Hard Drive

Apr 28
2008

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40 GIG SEAGATE IDE DESKTOP HARD DRIVE TESTED 7200 RPM
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US $13.50

HP 279785 001 364GB 10K RPM Wide Ultra320 Hard Drive
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US $95.00

Laptop 60GB SATA Hard Drive Samsung HM060HI 5400 RPM
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US $27.99

HP 516828 B21 600GB SAS 15K RPM 6GB S 35IN HARD DRIVE
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US $500.00

Hard Drives- Choosing the Right One

Hard drives come in many different sizes and configurations. How much data a Hard Drive can hold is measured in gigabytes (GB). The latest hard drives can hold anywhere from 80 GB to 1000 GB (1 TB)! When buying a hard drive, size isn't the only factor to look at, however. By choosing the right hard drive for your needs, you'll enjoy your computer more. Hard drives are inexpensive and you should never skimp on one to save money.

For business or basic home use, an 80 GB hard drive should suffice. If you plan on downloading music, movies, or installing a lot of games on your computer, your hard drive should be at least 160 GB. For laptop users, the same space requirements apply, however, many laptops come with small hard drives. Many laptop users choose to keep the small hard drive and buy an External Hard Drive for excess files to keep costs down.

You can have a huge hard drive, but it will be worthless if it doesn't move data fast enough for your computer! To find data, hard drives have platters on spindles that spin, similar to a CD. How fast a hard drive spins is measured in RPM (revolutions per minute). The higher a hard drive's RPM is, the faster it will perform. Desktop hard drives almost always have 7200 RPM hard drives. Laptop Hard Drives can range from 4200 RPM to 5400 RPM for budget and midrange uses and 7200 RPM for high end use. Hard drives with RPMs of 10,000 or more are available, but those are mainly for gamers, computer enthusiasts, and servers.

If you are computer user looking for performance, you should know about RAID. RAID lets you put 2 or more hard drives of the same brand and model together and run them at once, which results in faster performance. You can also use RAID so the second hard drives automatically backs up data from the first hard drive, so you always have a backup of your data. There are numerous possible RAID configurations out there, too many to mention in this article.

A hard drive's cache is also another important performance indicator. A hard drive's cache will hold frequently accessed data for faster access by the computer. A good hard drive will have at least 8 MB of cache. As with RPM, the more cache a hard drive has, the better.

Hard drives generally have either an SATA or IDE connection. Both connections are for attaching the hard drive to the motherboard via a cable so that data can be sent and received to and from the computer and drive. SATA is the newest connection and is better than IDE in that it can be faster and uses a much smaller cable. IDE, however, is just as fast as IDE in real world performance testa and hard drives that use IDE are cheaper than Sata Hard Drives. However, Ide Hard drives use large cables that can restrict airflow. Fortunately, you can buy a rounded IDE cable that is not as big for $5-$10 at almost any computer supply store or online computer part retailer, such as Newegg.com or Fry's Electronics.

About the Author

Joe Uantu is the owner of PC Fastlane, a great website where you can find computer help, interesting tech news and articles, a list of 200 free computer games, reviews, and more.
http://www.pcfastlane.com

Whats the difference between RAM, CPU and hard drive rpm?

Hey what is the difference between RAM, CPU and hard drive rpm

Most detailed and informative question gets best answer
Ok so everyones treating me like ive never used a computer before. I know the hard drive stores data, and the other 2 are related to speed, but i just needto know what the difference is between the 3 speeds. Thanks in advance

Your computer has three main "parts", the memory, the processor, and the hard drive.

The processor is where all the work is done. All programs are feed into the processor and runs them instruction by instruction and makes everything happen. The faster the processor, the more instructions per second it can run. The speed of a processor is showing you how many times per second it cycles through its processes.

For the processor to run, something has to give it the instructions for the programs and the data one which to act. For example, if you are writing a paper, it needs the instructions for the word processor and the text of the paper. This is done by the memory. The program and paper and loading into the memory and then it feeds them to the processor as needed. The more memory, the more programs and documents the PC can handle at once.

But no one ever has every program and every document running at once. Unused programs and documents are stored on the hard drive. When needed, the memory will fetch them from the hard drive and feed them to the processor. Reading from a hard drive, because it is mechanical, is one of the slowest process on a computer. The RPM refers to speed at which the memory can read from the drive. The faster the drive is able to spin, the quicker it can be read.

These answers are oversimplified, and there are more factors involved, but this should give you some idea of what the RAM, CPU and hard drive are and what the different numbers indicate.