A Hard Disk Drive or commonly known as an HDD is still the major storage option for millions of PCs. The SSDs are going really cheap now but...
A Hard Disk Drive or commonly known as an HDD is still the major storage option for millions of PCs. The SSDs are going really cheap now but still cannot beat the HDDs for their Price/GB. So it becomes necessary that you should know about some factors when you are choosing a hard drive.
So in this small guide, I will be taking you through some important specs and factors that will help you getting the best for your storage hunger. Keep in mind that throughout this article, I will be talking about the consumer grade HDDs. The enterprise level disks are different both in terms of usability and technologically.
Buy the best of HDDs on Amazon.in
Hard Drives- An Overview
Before going any further let's first discuss about how an HDD works.
This is an IDE drive but majority of the parts are same with SATA
HDDs are mechanical storage devices. It means that the data is stored on physical magnetic discs (platters) that rotate about an axis. The data is read through a magnetic head on an arm which is mobile and moves across the disks with the help of an actuator. Remember the old cassettes? Yes the HDDs work on teeny bit that manner.
This working is the simplest that I can think of. To find more about the proper working of an HDD, I would suggest you to go through the Wikipedia page on HDDs.
Some Minor Problems
Because of the mechanical nature of HDDs, there are certain properties associated with them. If you actually care about some of these factors, then I would suggest you to go for an SSD.
First they create noise. Though the modern drives are lot silent than their predecessors, there are still some high speed drives that become the enemies of silence. But they are typically the high end flagship drives which you don't really require if you are a normal user.
Second they are prone to vibration damage. If your drives are not secured properly and you move around your PC a lot, let us say to LAN parties then there is a really good chance that you are shortening your HDD's life. But for a home computer it does not really matter.
Third they are less power efficient compared to SSDs. The motors, spinning disks.. They need power! Yes they are not the most power hungry component but when you have many HDDs coupled together then the power factor really comes into play.
READ This TOO Choosing a PC Case- A Short GuidePowered by Inline Related Posts
Fourth they are less reliable in the long run. Data is recorded mechanically which results in wear and tear of the disks and maybe even bad sectors. But this depends.
So these were some minor problems that you will have to deal with if you are going for an HDD. Still with me? Good! Now let us talk about the good things and the factors that will help you in choosing a hard drive.
The Benefits- The Major Ones
A 1TB SSD (Samsung EVO) costs $335 and a 1TB HDD (WD Blue) costs $50. You can do the math now. HDDs are cheap. Period.
A Samsung 1TB SSD on amazon.com
A Western Digital Blue 1TB drive on Amazon.com
They are available in larger quantities. You get HDDs ranging from 160GB to 4096GB (4TB). So everyone can have an HDD according to their needs.
For an average user these factors are enough to satisfy their needs. But if you are a power user or a gamer then an SSD coupled with a large drive can do wonders.
Important factors to consider while Choosing a Hard Drive
Generally the three most important factors that make up a good drive will be Capacity, Speed and Noise and power consumption. There are other factors as well and I will tell you about those too.
Capacity- As we discussed, HDDs come in a variety of capacities- 160GB to 4TB. Until a few years ago, 320GB and 512GB were the high end models. But with the advancement in technology, 1TB models are common even in the bare-bones of a PC.
But how do you determine the capacity that you will need? It is simple. If you are going to use the drive in an office PC, a small one will do. MS Office applications, OS and other small software don't take up much space. Then there are some 12min HD videos which hover around the 1.5GB mark and you see the importance of a large drive. If you are going for something that requires huge amount of data, then 1TB is the minimum you should be looking at.
My advice? Better stuff the largest one that you can in your budget. As they say, it's better to be prepared.
But even a 10,000TB HDD is nothing without any speed..
SPEED- The speed of an HDD is measured in RPM. It denotes the rotations of the platter in a minute. The common speeds in which consumer HDDs are available are 5400RPM, 7200RPM and the not-so-common 10,000RPM drives. You also have the 15K drives but damn, those beauties are expensive and definitely NOT for consumer grade operations.
READ This TOO Best Graphics Cards in India - 2016 GuidePowered by Inline Related Posts
The mechanical working of the HDD determines its Access Time. It is the actual time that the HDD takes to transfer data. It is measured in milliseconds. This spec is not normally advertised much but this is the reason why two drives with same RPM offer different read and write speeds. To get information of this spec you will have to read professional reviews.
CrystalDiskMark score for a WD Blue drive on SATA 2
To give you an example, I own two drives: The WD Black and WD Blue. Both are 7200RPM drives, but the Black model gives a tad higher read and write speeds compared to the Blue. This is because of the lower access times of the WD Black. The motor of the arm moves faster.
How to decide if you want a 5400RPM model or a 7200RPM one? As I said before, for a basic office PC, a slow drive will be sufficient. If you are going to build a PC for a task which will require frequent read and writes from the drive then you definitely need a faster one. For smaller data files, both the drives will offer almost same performance, but when the size of the files increases, then the faster drive will provide decent performance.
My suggestion would be to get a 7200RPM drive if you plan to use the PC for anything other than basic home or office use. 5400RPM drives make good backup drives.
Noise and power consumption- these features are closely related to the speed of the HDD. A lower speed, economical drive like the Western Digital Green will consume less power and will also create less noise. The Black drive that I mentioned above, though a faster drive creates more noise than the Blue. This is because of its high speed and faster arms. This is a small compromise that you will have to make when you go for a fast HDD.
As for power consumption smaller capacity, low speed drives consume less power but generally a couple of drives will not make much of a difference. But if you planning to go for some kind of a storage server, than yes lower power consumption is very important.
READ This TOO Choosing Motherboard - How to Choose the Perfect Motherboard for Your PCPowered by Inline Related Posts
A normal 7200RPM drive consumes almost 7W of power at full load and around 1.2 at idle.
My experience says that if you have a case with proper sound suppression and are only going to use one or two drives then a 7200RPM drive provides a nice balance. This is why I love my WD Blue drive.
The Secondary Factors-
Other than above mentioned factors, there are some other things that you should know about choosing a hard drive.
Platter Density- It's the number of disks present in HDD for storage. Suppose there are two identical drives of 1TB, first is having 1 platter and the second one has 2. In this case the first drive will be faster because the moving arm will have to travel less distance for reading or writing the same data.
Simply put: more data in less space is good.
Cache Memory- A cache memory is a temporary memory that stores a small amount of data for a small amount of time. It prevents the data to be scanned on the main disk every time it needs to be read. It works in the same way how a cache memory works in a CPU. They are small, generally in the 16MB to 64MB range for most of the modern HDDs.
Just stick with the drive that has minimum 8MB cache and you will be fine.
Form Factor and Interface- 3.5" is the major form factor for desktop drives. There are 2.5" drives too but they are used in laptops. On the interface side, the most common interface is SATA. Until few years ago, PATA or the IDE drives were used but were replaced with SATA drives.
A 2.5″ drive with SATA connector and power pin.
SATA has variants too. First it was SATA 1, and then came SATA 2 and the latest SATA 3/3.1. On paper the SATA 3 (6 Gbps) provides double the data speeds of SATA 2 (3 Gbps) but in reality the difference is not much. All new drives are coming with SATA 3, so you will have it covered but the motherboard maybe a limiting factor. If you are living with IDE drives, man you should change that computer.
Warranty- Warranty is also a factor that will differentiate between two similar drives. There was a time when HDDs were offered with 5 years of warranty but times have changed now. The general warranty for most drives hover around the 1-3 year period. Some drives still offer better 5 year warranty like the WD Black series but they are expensive. I would suggest you to go for drive with at least 2 Years.
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Wrap Up
Hard drives fail and they fail spectacularly. They are less reliable and are more prone to damage if not taken proper care of. But still they are the only go to storage for a mainstream user. Take care of these factors and you should be getting yourself a good HDD.
So this wraps up the guide. This guide went over the basic concepts that you should be going through while choosing a hard drive. I will be posting a similar guide on SSDs and health of HDDs soon, so stay tuned!
So in this small guide, I will be taking you through some important specs and factors that will help you getting the best for your storage hunger. Keep in mind that throughout this article, I will be talking about the consumer grade HDDs. The enterprise level disks are different both in terms of usability and technologically.
Buy the best of HDDs on Amazon.in
Hard Drives- An Overview
Before going any further let's first discuss about how an HDD works.
This is an IDE drive but majority of the parts are same with SATA
HDDs are mechanical storage devices. It means that the data is stored on physical magnetic discs (platters) that rotate about an axis. The data is read through a magnetic head on an arm which is mobile and moves across the disks with the help of an actuator. Remember the old cassettes? Yes the HDDs work on teeny bit that manner.
This working is the simplest that I can think of. To find more about the proper working of an HDD, I would suggest you to go through the Wikipedia page on HDDs.
Some Minor Problems
Because of the mechanical nature of HDDs, there are certain properties associated with them. If you actually care about some of these factors, then I would suggest you to go for an SSD.
First they create noise. Though the modern drives are lot silent than their predecessors, there are still some high speed drives that become the enemies of silence. But they are typically the high end flagship drives which you don't really require if you are a normal user.
Second they are prone to vibration damage. If your drives are not secured properly and you move around your PC a lot, let us say to LAN parties then there is a really good chance that you are shortening your HDD's life. But for a home computer it does not really matter.
Third they are less power efficient compared to SSDs. The motors, spinning disks.. They need power! Yes they are not the most power hungry component but when you have many HDDs coupled together then the power factor really comes into play.
READ This TOO Choosing a PC Case- A Short GuidePowered by Inline Related Posts
Fourth they are less reliable in the long run. Data is recorded mechanically which results in wear and tear of the disks and maybe even bad sectors. But this depends.
So these were some minor problems that you will have to deal with if you are going for an HDD. Still with me? Good! Now let us talk about the good things and the factors that will help you in choosing a hard drive.
The Benefits- The Major Ones
A 1TB SSD (Samsung EVO) costs $335 and a 1TB HDD (WD Blue) costs $50. You can do the math now. HDDs are cheap. Period.
A Samsung 1TB SSD on amazon.com
A Western Digital Blue 1TB drive on Amazon.com
They are available in larger quantities. You get HDDs ranging from 160GB to 4096GB (4TB). So everyone can have an HDD according to their needs.
For an average user these factors are enough to satisfy their needs. But if you are a power user or a gamer then an SSD coupled with a large drive can do wonders.
Important factors to consider while Choosing a Hard Drive
Generally the three most important factors that make up a good drive will be Capacity, Speed and Noise and power consumption. There are other factors as well and I will tell you about those too.
Capacity- As we discussed, HDDs come in a variety of capacities- 160GB to 4TB. Until a few years ago, 320GB and 512GB were the high end models. But with the advancement in technology, 1TB models are common even in the bare-bones of a PC.
But how do you determine the capacity that you will need? It is simple. If you are going to use the drive in an office PC, a small one will do. MS Office applications, OS and other small software don't take up much space. Then there are some 12min HD videos which hover around the 1.5GB mark and you see the importance of a large drive. If you are going for something that requires huge amount of data, then 1TB is the minimum you should be looking at.
My advice? Better stuff the largest one that you can in your budget. As they say, it's better to be prepared.
But even a 10,000TB HDD is nothing without any speed..
SPEED- The speed of an HDD is measured in RPM. It denotes the rotations of the platter in a minute. The common speeds in which consumer HDDs are available are 5400RPM, 7200RPM and the not-so-common 10,000RPM drives. You also have the 15K drives but damn, those beauties are expensive and definitely NOT for consumer grade operations.
READ This TOO Best Graphics Cards in India - 2016 GuidePowered by Inline Related Posts
The mechanical working of the HDD determines its Access Time. It is the actual time that the HDD takes to transfer data. It is measured in milliseconds. This spec is not normally advertised much but this is the reason why two drives with same RPM offer different read and write speeds. To get information of this spec you will have to read professional reviews.
CrystalDiskMark score for a WD Blue drive on SATA 2
To give you an example, I own two drives: The WD Black and WD Blue. Both are 7200RPM drives, but the Black model gives a tad higher read and write speeds compared to the Blue. This is because of the lower access times of the WD Black. The motor of the arm moves faster.
How to decide if you want a 5400RPM model or a 7200RPM one? As I said before, for a basic office PC, a slow drive will be sufficient. If you are going to build a PC for a task which will require frequent read and writes from the drive then you definitely need a faster one. For smaller data files, both the drives will offer almost same performance, but when the size of the files increases, then the faster drive will provide decent performance.
My suggestion would be to get a 7200RPM drive if you plan to use the PC for anything other than basic home or office use. 5400RPM drives make good backup drives.
Noise and power consumption- these features are closely related to the speed of the HDD. A lower speed, economical drive like the Western Digital Green will consume less power and will also create less noise. The Black drive that I mentioned above, though a faster drive creates more noise than the Blue. This is because of its high speed and faster arms. This is a small compromise that you will have to make when you go for a fast HDD.
As for power consumption smaller capacity, low speed drives consume less power but generally a couple of drives will not make much of a difference. But if you planning to go for some kind of a storage server, than yes lower power consumption is very important.
READ This TOO Choosing Motherboard - How to Choose the Perfect Motherboard for Your PCPowered by Inline Related Posts
A normal 7200RPM drive consumes almost 7W of power at full load and around 1.2 at idle.
My experience says that if you have a case with proper sound suppression and are only going to use one or two drives then a 7200RPM drive provides a nice balance. This is why I love my WD Blue drive.
The Secondary Factors-
Other than above mentioned factors, there are some other things that you should know about choosing a hard drive.
Platter Density- It's the number of disks present in HDD for storage. Suppose there are two identical drives of 1TB, first is having 1 platter and the second one has 2. In this case the first drive will be faster because the moving arm will have to travel less distance for reading or writing the same data.
Simply put: more data in less space is good.
Cache Memory- A cache memory is a temporary memory that stores a small amount of data for a small amount of time. It prevents the data to be scanned on the main disk every time it needs to be read. It works in the same way how a cache memory works in a CPU. They are small, generally in the 16MB to 64MB range for most of the modern HDDs.
Just stick with the drive that has minimum 8MB cache and you will be fine.
Form Factor and Interface- 3.5" is the major form factor for desktop drives. There are 2.5" drives too but they are used in laptops. On the interface side, the most common interface is SATA. Until few years ago, PATA or the IDE drives were used but were replaced with SATA drives.
A 2.5″ drive with SATA connector and power pin.
SATA has variants too. First it was SATA 1, and then came SATA 2 and the latest SATA 3/3.1. On paper the SATA 3 (6 Gbps) provides double the data speeds of SATA 2 (3 Gbps) but in reality the difference is not much. All new drives are coming with SATA 3, so you will have it covered but the motherboard maybe a limiting factor. If you are living with IDE drives, man you should change that computer.
Warranty- Warranty is also a factor that will differentiate between two similar drives. There was a time when HDDs were offered with 5 years of warranty but times have changed now. The general warranty for most drives hover around the 1-3 year period. Some drives still offer better 5 year warranty like the WD Black series but they are expensive. I would suggest you to go for drive with at least 2 Years.
Amazon.in Widgets
Wrap Up
Hard drives fail and they fail spectacularly. They are less reliable and are more prone to damage if not taken proper care of. But still they are the only go to storage for a mainstream user. Take care of these factors and you should be getting yourself a good HDD.
So this wraps up the guide. This guide went over the basic concepts that you should be going through while choosing a hard drive. I will be posting a similar guide on SSDs and health of HDDs soon, so stay tuned!
Thanks for giving time to this article. If you have a suggestion to make or a question to ask then leave a comment below and I will give my best to answer them. Also don't forget to share this article if you found it useful.