As HD home video and digital music and photo collections grow increasingly common, there is an explosion in the need for hard drive storage capacity. Sometimes all the options out there can be a bit overwhelming. Here are some great tips for buying a hard drive that will provide you with reliable data storage and performance for years to come.
1. Speed - when looking at information about the drive, look for a number indicating RPM, which stands for Rotations Per Minute. This is the speed, or Transfer Speed, of the drive. It is very important to your efficiency (and sanity!) that the transfer speed is adequate. Otherwise, you'll find yourself getting frustrated as your drive bogs down while copying big blocks of photos from your camera, moving video clips around, or dealing with other operations that involve large amounts of data. If possible, try to buy one that has a transfer speed of 7200 RPM or higher.
2. Drive Type - SATA vs IDE vs USB-If you've purchased your computer within the last ten years or so, it will likely have the correct hardware for a SATA drive. Don't worry too much about understanding what this means. For the purposes of this article, it's enough to simply make sure that your computer is set up to accept SATA-type drives.
USB drives are external drives that connect to your computer via a USB cable. With the advent of USB 2.0 and the upcoming USB 3.0 standard, these drives provide remarkably fast data transfer speeds and are very convenient. I and many of my friends use multiple external USB drives for working on photo and video projects. These are especially handy if you spend some or all of your time using a notebook computer. Notebooks tend to have smaller internal drives. Having one or more external USB drives can give you the flexibility to travel with all the data you want without worrying about running out of space on your internal hard drive.
3. Reliable Brand - We recommend only the best brands in our reviews. We also deal only with the most trustworthy retailers. By sticking with reputable vendors and with quality brands like Western Digital, Seagate, Toshiba, and Iomega, you are assured of the highest quality products and the best prices.
4. Assess Storage Needs - When purchasing hard drives, less is rarely more. Typically, you want to buy device with enough capacity not only for your current needs, but also for your needs into the near future. Do you already have a 500MB drive that is 90% full and you just bought a HD camcorder? Odds are you'll want to purchase a drive that has at least 1TB of capacity to store those big video files capturing those priceless memories. You want to buy a big enough drive to give you room to grow, rather than worrying about whether you should delete some of your files because you are running out of disk space. We hope these tips have been helpful to you in making your buying decision.
Stick to these tips and you'll end up with a great hard drive that will serve you well into the future.
