Types of Hard Drives and Guidelines before Selecting One

By: JenniferAbej Click author's name for more of his/her articles

The different types of hardware manufactured today depend on the type of computers they are used in. The main factors that define a hard drive's physical and technical characteristics are the space available in the PC, speed needed for transferring data, and the amount of storage space that is required. In some cases, any one of the aforementioned factors would take priority over the others, like in a laptop computer where the disk drive has to be small in order to fit in the laptop case or a server where the speed of the disk drive is of utmost importance.
The PATA, SATA and SCSI types of hard drives are most commonly used in today's computers.

Parallel Advanced Technology Attachment (PATA) has been the industry standard for connecting hard drives and other devices in computers for well over a decade. However, due to a few major limitations, PATA could be a quickly dying breed with the introduction of Serial ATA (SATA).
To compare, PATA cables are limited to only 18 inches long, while SATA cables can be up to 1 meter in length, which is less than 40 inches. It is possible to have longer cables but, due to attenuation, these longer cables are generally more trouble than they are worth.
Another comparison is that SATA devices require much less power than PATA. Chip core voltages continue to decline and, because of this, PATA's 5-volt requirement is increasingly difficult to meet. In contrast, SATA only requires 250 mV to effectively operate. SATA is also hot-swappable meaning that devices can be added or removed while the computer is on (depends on OS features to detect new hardware after hot-swap).

A Small Computer System Interface or (SCSI) hard drive is a storage drive which uses a different system than that found in most home computers. Its main advantage is that multiple drives can be "daisy-chained" to a single connection. It also offers faster data transfer speeds, though the difference is often greater in theory than practice. SCSI is particularly suited to servers and other computer systems designed to be used 24/7.
SCSI drives have historically had faster data transfer speeds than other types of hard drive, though this gap has shortened over time. A SCSI hard drive will also normally spin at a fast speed which can shorten the time it takes to read, write and access data. SCSI drives are also better suited to running continuously, rather than rival drive types which are designed and priced for personal computer use of a few hours each day. These advantages, and the high price, mean that a SCSI drive is usually most appropriate for systems which are permanently switched on and heavily used such as server set-ups.

If you compare hard drive developments with the advances in graphics or CPUs you will notice one thing: there are few must-haves and really no "big bangs". Hard drives seem to be boring, but that's only at first glance. In fact, there has been considerable progress, as storage densities and performance have increased continuously; there just isn't an obvious way to take notice of it except for the increasing capacities. Even experts sometimes can't tell two similar drives apart if not for their product label, but performance may vary quite a bit.

In general, hard drives tend to be noisy. However, each manufacturer has their own technology to reduce the mechanical sounds. Some brands are quieter than others. Many simply lower the performance, others change the design. When choosing a hard drive look for special notes attributed to reduced noise. A low noise hard drive is worth its extra price for PC users.

Start shopping your hard drive at http://www.computronestore.com, where there are more than 1.4 million I.T. products on-line to choose from. Browse now to find out more.

About the Author:

Jennifer Abej, content writer for computronestore.com