Hard Drive Reviews and Buying Guide:

It used to be that your computer would "die" long before you used all the space on your hard drive, but with todays megafiles being downloaded off the web, you need lots of storage space on your internal or external hard drives. When computers were first sold the only option was the internal hard drive for storage possibilities. There were external ZIP drives that came along to help with some storage needs, but most people still used their internal drives as their main source of data storage. The price of a megabyte slowly declined to the point that the terminology switched to a gigabyte (1000 megabytes). We have now entered the era where terabytes (1000 gigabytes) will take over how we look at hard drives. It's hard to fathom needing all that storage space, but with media files (music, video, audio) dominating hard drives a terabyte may not be enough even a few years from now. At least prices continue to fall as technology allows manufacturers to build larger hard drives that offer more space for cheaper prices.

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Without a working hard drive your computer would fail to work, so you need a quality product. A computer hard drive stores things like your operating system, all your data and music files, and any programs you run. I have a 250 GB hard drive on my desktop computer and have barely touched the surface in terms of disk usage. I probably won't need another hard drive anytime soon, but you do hear stories of peoples hard drives failing which means all the information is lost (most likely). There are internal hard drives that attach to your motherboard or interface card and external hard drives that connect to your computer but are external and not built into the original PC or laptop. Many computer owners are switching over to external hard drives for their storage needs since they are so versatile and convenient. You can literally take gigabytes of data and files with your anywhere and let your friends or co-workers get instant access to them. External hard drives are more expensive than internal drives, but we feel they are worth the extra money. Internal hard drives are offered as PATA (Parallel Advanced Technology Attachment) or IDE drives and SATA (Serial ATA). Experts say SATA drives are better since they are easier to connect and have a newer interface. The future is towards SATA drives while PATA drives won't be supported on newer motherboards. Large capacity drives are great, but prices are dropping fast on these types so concentrate more on performance from your drive to get the best deal. Most hard drives will perform just fine doing basic business apps and running music files or video movies. For most people a 500 GB hard drive is more than ample to store your video, music, and data files for years to come. If you know you are a music fanatic or movie buff, then perhaps a larger drive will be necessary as you gather more files onto your hard drive. Speed of hard drives is crucial to some and only slightly important to others. You can find most hard drives that run at a rotational speed of 7200 RPM (revolutions per minute). The 10,000 RPM internal SATA 3.5 inch drives are on the market, but they are focused to niche users right now. The external hard drives tend to be a little slower in speed and at this time offer 4200-rpm, 5400-rpm, and 7200-rpm models. Some basic words of advice on buying a new hard drive are: always buy more capacity than you think you will need, if you are planning on buying a second internal hard drive for your PC make sure there is internal space for it, try to buy a hard drive that will match the interface speed for the best compatablity, external drives are best used for backing up data and not as a main storage source, and check for bargains at places like Frys Electronics or online. PCWorld.com has excellent online reviews of the latest hard drives from all the manufacturers and they rate them every few months. CNET and Storagereview.com are 2 other sites with feedback on the newest hard drives (both internal and external) with consumer opinions as well. We found a few online forums with technical support for those with hard drive problems and issues at Tek-tips.com and Hardforum.com. Both sites have online tips and troubleshooting caveats that are very helpful. The top hard drive manufacturers are Hitachi, Western Digital, Maxtor, Samsung, Seagate, Iomega, Fantom, Beyond Micro, LaCie, and Fujitsu. Expect to pay $100 or more for a 500 GB hard drive and up to $400 for the newest terabyte hard drives. We have tried to supply the top rated and best selling hard drives in different categories as of Summer 2007 down below.

Top Ranked Internal Hard Drives:

PC World does an excellent job of testing the latest hard drives and you can imagine how fast the technology changes in this field. Their newest results say the Samsung SpinPoint T Series HD501LJ ($170) gets the best ratings. The drive size is 500 Gigabytes (GB) and has rpm speed of 7200. The buffer size is 16 MB and the supported interface is SATA 300. Owners say the drive is fast, quiet, and delivers superior performance to other drives in the 500 GB capacity range. Prices vary by retailer, but expect to pay around $125 for this hard drive. Other top rated drives include the Western Digital Caviar SE WD3200JB (320 GB), Hitachi Global Storage Technologies Deskstar 7K500 (500 GB), and the Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000 (see below for details).

Best External Hard Drives:

External hard drives are great for transfering data around without having to take your desktop or laptop everywhere. Sure you can write tons of data to a DVD-R, but having an external storage device that will hold 500 GB's of data is pretty convenient. External hard drives come available in USB 2.0, FireWire, or external SATA styles. These drives are not as fast as internal hard drives, but most people choose to use external drives for backup purposes. Prices vary from $220 to $300. The top 3 external hard drives in the 500 GB category are the Apricorn EZ Bus Desktop SATA, LaCie d2 Quadra, and the Iomega 500GB ESATA/USB 2.0 Black Series Hard Drive. All are rated very high by PC World, but the Apricorn gets the "best buy" tag next to it. It supports external SATA-300 and USB 2.0 interfaces with a buffer size of 8 MB and speed of 7200 rpm. The LaCie Quadra gives you an extra 8 MB in buffer size and it also supports FireWire 800/400 interfaces. The Apricorn is the cheapest of the 3 with the LaCie sporting the highest cost.

Terabyte Hard Drive:

Ok, we've been waiting years to see the first one-terabyte hard drive to hit the market and now there is one. The Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000 ($400) has 1000 gigabytes of storage for anyone who needs it. With broadband connections prevalent today in households, many more people are downloading videos and movies off the Internet and need plenty of storage space on their hard drives to keep all this data. A gigabyte used to be a big hard drive but we all knew that someday the terabyte level would be reached. Hitachi has the 2nd highest rated internal hard drive (per PC World) with the Deskstar. Some of the . http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,131417-page,1-c,harddrives/article.html http://www.storagereview.com/HDS721010KLA330.sr

Portable Hard Drive:

When we started searching for a portable hard drive, we came across mostly listings for Western Digital and their Passport product. Although other portable hard drives are on the market, the Western Digital Passport ($90 for 120 GB) is the clear leader in this category. They offer 60 GB, 120GB, and 160 GB models with 5400 rpm speeds and is supported via the USB 2.0 interface. These portable storage devices are great for business files or personal data such as videos, photos, or music. There is a shock-absorbing case that protects the 2.5 inch hard drive and all your valuable data. Owners say they like the way you can connect to both PC's and Macs. The Passport is lightweight and very compact. Other popular portable hard drives include the Iomega Portable/100GB and the US Modular/Dragon Drive.

USB Flash Hard Drive:

A portable hard drive like those mentioned from Western Digital above are great for carrying over 100 GB's of data around like a wallet. Imagine something even smaller (about the size of your index finder) that will store 2-16 GB's and easily connects to any PC. Kingston, SanDisk, PNY, Kanguru, Lexar and Corsair. The 4GB Data Traveler USB 2.0 Flash Drive from Kingston prices out at roughly $40 and users say it's reliable and a very cheap solution to carrying around files in your pocket. Other consumers mention that transfer times are "pretty fast" and copying is "easy". Floppy disks are all but gone on computers these days and USB flash drives are sure to only get bigger capacities for even cheaper prices going forward.

Hard Drive Recovery Software:

Hard drives do fail periodically so having a backup hard drive (external) is a good idea. There are even software programs that will help recover lost data if your hard drive fails. Some of the more popular hard drive recovery services on the Internet are at Drivesavers.com, Recoveryourdata.com, and Salvagedata.com. Prices vary on how many users will be running the software. You can even download demos online to try out risk free. ALWAYS back up your most pertinent files every 30 days (minimum) so you don't run into this problem.

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