Hard drives have come a long way since we reviewed IBM's first hard drive. today you can find hard drives that store 2 Terabytes of data, that's over 2 million times the amount of data the first dive could hold. With the amount of storage mediums growing it does look like we are seeing the end of magnetic disc in the near future. more information on the new Western Digital 2TB can be found here:
I feel like I am reading Bill Gates book.
ReplyDeleteHard drives are the central storage device for data on your computer. On it rests the documents you create, the music you listen to, the games you play and the video you view. You'll want to choose a drive which is optimized for your primary purpose.
There are a few main things to consider when selecting a hard drive: internal or external hard drive, connection type, speed and capacity. Whether you call it a Hard Drive, a Hard Disk, or an HDD, budget permitting, always go for the fastest drive you can. Speed of data access is measured using RPMs (revolutions per minute). Typical drives range from 5400 to 7200 ROM, with more and more 9600 RPM drive appearing on the scene. A faster rotational speed means greater performance, especially in games, but may cause greater heat and noise.
The capacity, measured in GB (gigabytes), should depend on your own storage requirements. A higher capacity drive will invariably cost more than a smaller drive, so a balance must usually be struck between capacity and cost.
The hard drive interface, whether it's IDE, SATA, or SCSI determine a drive's application: IDE and SATA for personal storage and SCSI for enterprise and mission critical storage. Please see our Internal Hard Drive Buying Guide for more information.
Successive years of shrinkage, however, have led to magnetic grains that measure about 8 nanometers long. (A nanometer is a billionth of a meter.) Drive manufacturers have bought time with perpendicular drives, which stack the bits vertically. But that solution doesn't eliminate the "no more shrinkage" problem.
While today’s drives have sophisticated systems for compensating for the failure of small sectors, in general the more bits of data you cram into a material, the more you lose if part of it becomes degraded or damaged. What’s more, a decay process that would leave a large-scale bit of data readable could destroy some smaller-scale bits.
Society is starting to really rely on hard drives for all data even junk~no matter what you still need to back up your data even if its not on paper!