Eliminate the Horrors of Shopping for a Hard Drive?

Answer 1

Maybe your primary hard drive bit the dust and you're in need of a new one. Maybe you need an extra hard drive. Whatever the case may be, it can be stressful for anyone who shops for hard drives.

If you've looked through the selection of hard drives at your local computer store and felt like you were spoken to in another language, this is okay. Shopping for hard drives can be overwhelming with all of the technical terminology and jargon. The first thing you need to establish is whether or not you will need an external or internal hard drive. This will eliminate half of the products available. To be specific, an internal hard drive is one that is seated on the inside of your computer. An external hard drive is a portable drive that connects to your computer via USB.

Next, if you're buying an internal hard drive, you'll need to decide whether your computer makes a SATA or ATA connection to its hard drive. Not sure? You can find out by checking the hard drive that originally came inside of your computer. If your computer is newer (a few years old), your computer will more than likely be able to support both types of hard drives.

Your next item of analysis is what size space you need for your computer. Hard drives these days are so big that they can support multiple "terabytes" (a thousand gigabytes) of space. However, most users don't need this type of space. If you plan on storing photos and basic documents on your computer (as well as mainly browsing the internet and checking email), it would be ideal to invest in a hard drive that is anywhere between 100-300 gigabytes. If you plan on storing lots of media and using heavy applications, it may be wise to invest in a hard drive that has at least a terabyte worth of space.