Build a PC Computer - How to choose a hard drive - All New for 2009 - homepcbuilder.com

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Overview
In lesson 1 we'll cover SATA, IDE, external and SSD hard drives, what features and specs to look for when shopping, and how much you can expect to pay when building your own computer.

The hard drive is where all information is stored on your computer. Be it the Windows operating system, programs you install, or files you download and create on the computer. Everything is stored on the hard drive.

When selecting a hard drive to install into your computer there are two basic features you need to consider. They are the capacity and the speed of the drive.

Capacity:

Capacity is how much data a hard drive can store. Capacity is measured in Giga Bytes and Tera Bytes. 1 GB is made up of 1000 Mega Bytes. 1 TB is made up of 1000 GB. To give you an example of how much you can fit into 1 GB of hard drive space, take a MP3 audio file. The average MP3 audio file takes up 5 MB. Divide 1000 by 5 and you get 200. So 1 GB of hard drive space can store 200 MP3 music files. A 1 TB hard drive, which is 1000 GB can store 200,000 MP3 music files.

The size of the drive you choose is up to you. Generally you should buy the biggest drive you can afford. We recommend at least a 750 GB drive.

Speed:

The speed of the hard drive is determined by the revolution speed of the disk inside the hard drive and the amount of memory cache included in the drive.

The rotation speed is measured in RPMs or revolutions per minute. Most hard drives spin at 7200 revolutions per minute. Faster hard drives spin at 10,000 or 15,000 RPMs. The revolutions speed is important because the faster the drive rotates, the more quickly data can be written to and read from the hard drive.

10,000 and 15,000 RPM drives are expensive and the capacities are limited. We recommend buying a 7200 RPMs drive.

The memory cache helps to speed up the accessing of the information on the drive and the more of it the better. Drives can have 32 MB or more of cache. When purchasing a hard drive, a minimum of 16 MB of cache is recommended.

Solid State Drives

SSD or Flash memory based drives have no spinning disk to store data on. All information is kept on flash memory chips and can be read back much quicker than from a disk based drive. These drives are expensive and have lower capacities of between 8GB to 512GB.

Larger drives are coming and you can expect the prices to drop, but disk based drives will continue to be the most popular due to their far greater storage capacity.

Interfaces:

The hard drive connects to the computer through the hard drive controller on the motherboard. The most common hard drive controller is called Serial ATA or SATA. Sometimes pronounced say-ta or sa ta. A SATA controller's speed is measured in Mega Bytes or MB per second. The original form of SATA had a speed of 150 MBps.

SATA II controllers which are found on all motherboards today have a speed of 300 MBps. Also, SATA II introduced a few new features. The most important is called Native Command Queing or NCQ which speeds up the access of data a little bit more. The next version of SATA will be called SATA III and will run at 600 MBps and will probably also include a few new features.

To get the speed and features of SATA, whatever the version, both the motherboard and the hard drive itself have to support the same version of SATA

An older hard drive controller type called IDE (sometimes called ATA) with speeds that topped out at 133 Mbps is being phased out and will become less available on future motherboards.

For this reason we recommend buying a SATA II hard drive for your new computer.

So when you go to purchase your hard drive or drives, youre looking for... 1. At least a 750 GB drive capacity.
2. At least a 7200 RPM speed with 16MB of cache.
3. Serial ATA II support.
4. If you want to try RAID look for your type of RAID support 0, 1 or 5 on the motherboard.

Buy the complete series of videos showing how to build a pc computer at http://www.homepcbuilder.com

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• build a pc computer
• hard drive
• hdd

[Satur0z]

1 gb is 1000 mb jou dumbass..

[hpcbdvd]

@Satur0z You are the 16th person to point this out. It is true, 1024GB is in 1TB. This gets into decimal vs binary systems which is not the point of this video. Google search for 'what is a terabyte' if you would like to know more.

[HQRidAz]

1gb = 1024 MB, it was not bad.

gj

[hpcbdvd]

@HQRidAz You are the 15th person to point this out. It is true, 1024GB is in 1TB. This gets into decimal vs binary systems which is not the point of this video. Google search for 'what is a terabyte' if you would like to know more.

[ApacheGate2]

pls help me guys.I want to buy a new hard drive sata 3.But my motherbroad its sata 2.Is there anyway to convert my motherbroad to sata 3 without buying a new one cause a good motherbroad cost like 300 euro

[hpcbdvd]

@ApacheGate2 SATA 3 is a the new standard for hard drive interfaces. It allow data to be transfered at up to 6Gb per second. The older SATA 2 allows transfers of 3Gb per second. Here is the thing. No hard drive can get close to 3Gb per seconds of transfer. The limitation is in getting data off the disk. There are new SSD (Solid State Drives) coming out very soon that will need the extra bandwidth that SATA 3 offers, if it is just a hard drive or current generation SSD you don't need SATA 3

[balintpataki]

i gotta admit that im not bad at the computer, but most of what you said was new to me. thank you for the clear and educational video!

[2007FORLife]

omg dude keep doing what you're doing you rock!!! (although most of the stuff you said i already knew) but you still rock on and im not 1 of those people who say 1st post cause they're gay

[MultiSnoopDawg]

I'm noob at pc, so, hard drives in a modern system if you have the right cables, right? Sata wasn't it?

[jepOn0502]

Cant you help me,i want buy new pc,my problem is,which i want choose good brand ?,my means,acer,dell and other ?

[hpcbdvd]

@oOoDeadlyoOo That may be true. What we recommend is the capacity hard drive with the most bang for the buck. In 2009 that was a 750GB drive.

[oOoDeadlyoOo]

i have to say that 500 GB of space is more then enough for a regular computer user!