A computer hard drive is a storage media where you install and store all your programs and data. Generally, the bigger the memory capacity, the more data you can store. The memory capacity is usually measured in gigabytes. Currently in the market, you can find hard drive that range from 10GB to as high as 750GB.

Over the years, hard drive technology has improved greatly. While its storage capacity has increased, other aspect such as its transfer speed, interface type, buffer etc. has also improved to a great extent. When choosing a computer hard drive, the things that you should look out for are the buffer, storage capacity, drive interface and the RPM.

Buffer

Every hard drive has a small amount of onboard memory that is known as buffer or cache. When data is received from the platters, it is stored into the buffer so that the next time you need to retrieve it, the data can be directly loaded from the buffer.

The bigger the buffer size, the faster the data can be accessed. Currently, the minimum is 8MB and several high end drives now come with 16MB buffers.

Disk Storage space

The storage space determines how much data you can store. The more the merrier. As a guideline, for normal usage, get a hard drive that is at least 10-20GB bigger than your current data size.

Drive Interface

The traditional drive interface is using the IDE cable. Its transfer speed range from 33MB/s to 133MB/s, depending on the motherboard and the hard drive bus specification.

Ideally, the higher the transfer speed, the better the computer performance. The transfer speed can be identified by the label Ultra DMA33, Ultra DMA66, Ultra DMA100, Ultra DMA133. The number on the label represents the transfer speed in MB/s.

Serial ATA (also known as SATA) is the next generation drive interface. The first version has a maximum transfer speed of 150MB/s and SATA II (second version) delivers 300 MB/s. A version set for year 2008 will deliver 600 MB/s.

SATA has several key advantages over the IDE (or Parallel ATA, PATA).

1. SATA has a faster transfer speed then IDE;
2. SATA uses very thin and small 7 pins connector that can go up to 1m in length, whereas IDE only allow the flat 40 wire connector that only limit to 46cm. This smaller cable length improves the air flow and heat dispersion inside the casing.
3. SATA has a lower power requirement (250mV) than IDE (5V);
4. SATA technology allows hot-swapping, which means drives can be removed or added while the computer is running. This is not achievable in IDE.

Most of the motherboards come with integrated SATA and IDE interface. For older system, third party SATA controllers can also be installed in any PCI slot to allow the system to connect to the SATA drive.

RPM consideration

RPM refers to the Revolution per Minute. The faster the disk rotates, the more data it can process. 5400rpm used to be the most common speed in the market today. Lately, hard drive manufacturers have started introducing 7200rpm hard drives to the market and the price is comparable to a 5400rpm hard drive.

Recommendation For a Good Gaming Computer Hard Drive

To get the best performance out of a hard drive, a good gaming computer hard drive must have

• A large storage space, of at least 80GB to store the game files.
• A large buffer, typically of 16MB to facilitate data caching during game play
• SATA 2 interface for maximum data transfer rate.
• A disk rotation speed of 7200rpm for maximum data processing rate

A good gaming computer hard drive that I love and strongly recommend is Seagate 320GB SATA-II Hard Drive hard drive. It is super quiet and works great under Window XP, Vista and Linux. The data processing speed is fast and I have no problem getting it to work in under 10 minutes.

Share and Enjoy!