How many hard drives and their capacity. How to choose a hard drive: advice from professionals. SATA connector

There is a rule - the higher the skill in using a PC, the more volume it needs HDD. Various collections of movies, games, pictures and home videos take up a lot of space in PC memory, so users try to increase its volume whenever possible. However, many people do not know what an ideal hard drive should be like, one that would have a lot of space, fit the configuration, and work quickly. That is why further information will be given on what parameters you should use to choose a drive, which one is more reliable and how to choose a device “for yourself”.

Rules for selecting a hard drive

It is worth immediately warning that “hard drives” (as hard drives are sometimes called) come in different varieties, and their choice is fraught with some difficulties. First of all, you need to rely on the following basic parameters of the HDD (hard drive):

1. Volume. Figuratively speaking, the volume determines how much data the hard drive can contain before the “hard drive is full” warning lights up in front of you. Currently, you can purchase hard drives with a capacity of 1TB, which is enough for any collection (within reasonable limits) of the most “heavy” games or films.
2. Company manufacturer. Currently, several large companies share the title of “ best manufacturer ZhD", but there is still no clear leader. Its reliability, performance and a good dozen other parameters directly depend on which companies create the hard drive.
3. Cache sizes. Cache memory sets the speed of data processing by the device; to put it simply, the better this indicator, the faster the computer will boot, the faster data will be loaded, and some queries will be executed.
4. Connector type. The connector determines whether the “hard” one will fit your computer or laptop. This parameter also affects the quality of the device’s throughput.
5. Spindle rotation speed. This indicator also affects the speed of data processing, and accordingly, a higher-speed hard drive will record information faster.

Needless to say, the best hard drives will have all the maximum characteristics, and accordingly their purchase will cost a pretty penny. However, combining the device’s performance with your real needs will allow you to buy a good and inexpensive (comparatively) option that will ideally cover the user’s needs. QwertyShop experts described the information on selecting a hard drive http://qwertyshop.com.ua/zhestkie-diski as clearly and usefully as possible, so that everyone chooses the option correctly and to their taste.

With the development of computer technology, all devices in this category began to rapidly decrease in size, gradually “growing” into pocket versions. The same situation happened with hard drives; as a result, external drives, which are easy to use and miniature in size. The price, of course, has also increased. However, it is not at all necessary to buy such device options; it all depends on the ultimate goal of the “upgrade”:

1. Increased memory capacity. If the user's goal is simply to increase available memory, then there is no need to spend money on external device options. It is enough to select the hard drive format that matches your computer configuration, and then simply connect it as a secondary platform for storing data.
2. The main hard drive for a computer. In this option there is also no need to waste money on mobile types hard drives, but purchase an internal reinforced concrete with good recording speed and volume.
3. Mobile data storage. If the user needs a large storage device that is easy to carry and use, then it is worth paying attention to external hard disk. As a rule, such devices have a USB connector, which allows you to connect them to any PC without opening the system unit and digging through the wires. In addition, external hard drives can be connected to other equipment - video players, laptops, TVs, and then read data from them.

As for internal devices, you should choose them according to the following parameters.

Hard disk capacity

If desired, you can purchase devices with different capacities, starting from 250 GB and ending with “terabytes”, however, practice shows that too large amounts of memory are unnecessary for most users. With the spread of the Internet, all data is stored not on the hard drive, but on the Internet, with the exception of games and programs. If a user considers himself to be “average,” then a HDD capacity of 500 GB is enough for him. More capacious devices require more resources for manufacturers, and therefore cost much more. 1TB is worth buying only for those people who like to collect collections of films, pictures and other data; such hard drives are also needed for games.

Cache memory

In fact, the disk cache plays the role of operational space where data of primary importance is loaded. The higher the setting, the faster tasks on the computer will be completed. A standard hard drive has a clipboard capacity (another name for this memory section) from 8 to 32 MB. This is quite enough for the average user who does not program, does not like powerful and productive games, but simply surfs the Internet and watches videos. The most productive HDD will be a device with 64 MB.

Spindle speed

The hard drive itself looks like a large disk that spins during operation. It is driven by the spindle, and the head, which has direct contact with the disk, is responsible for reading and writing data. The faster the spindle rotates, the faster the hard drive performs its task - processing information. The average hard drive has a rotation speed of 5400 rpm; more expensive and productive models have a speed of 5900 or 7200 units. Again, if the user wants a “faster” disk, then it’s worth looking at an HDD with a speed of 10,000 units - one of the most functional options today.

Important information: do not also forget about new types of devices that are gradually taking over the market - SSD system drives. This option differs from the standard in the type of device - SSD drives operate on solid media. No disks, no spindles, only data storage chips. Such hard drives have much more fast speed work, they do not make noise (more on this a little later), but the cost and reliability of these HDDs is much less. The cost is understandable, but reliability needs to be sorted out. The thing is that it is impossible to recover data from an SSD - if the voltage jumps to the upper limit, then this version of the technique “burns out completely”.

Interface

With the development of computer technology, hard drives have changed several times the connector through which it is connected to the PC. Modern version has a SATA connector (for external ones - USB), it is used in almost all models of computers and disks. However, another interface has not yet completely gone out of use - IDE. The SATA version has much greater bandwidth, so such a hard drive will process data faster, but if the user has an old PC, he should be careful - these two interfaces are incompatible.

Manufacturer

As for the manufacturer of this equipment, expert opinions vary greatly. Most of them believe that the leading companies involved in the development of railways are “ Western Digital" and "Hitachi". It is these companies that create the most reliable devices - their temperature is always at the same level, breakdowns occur infrequently, and functionality is at its best. Some analysts put Seagate in opposition to WD (Western Digital). The most unreliable, yet popular HDDs are those from Samsung (editor's opinion).

Statements regarding the unreliability of Samsung drives are made based on:
1. number of warranty returns per retail network QwertyShop;
2. analysis of reviews in the Yandex.Market service;
3. personal experience editors with short term disk services of this manufacturer.

Industry leaders, Western Digital, have special color codes for the reliability and quality of devices.

Noise level

Some users are annoyed by the noise that the hard drive makes during operation. It can crack, hum, rattle, and this whole cacophony begins when power is supplied to the computer and ends when it is turned off. It is believed that Western Digital devices make the least noise during operation, but this is a subjective opinion of the company’s fans, so it’s a stretch to take this into account. There are no other parameters for choosing a disk based on the level of noise it produces, so you have to hope for luck.

If the hard drive operates in “difficult” conditions for it, it will quickly fail. To delay this moment as long as possible, you should consider the following expert advice.

1. Use a UPS. A high-quality uninterruptible power supply will protect the HDD from voltage surges - the main killer of technical equipment.
2. Use control programs. There are a number of programs that regularly scan the condition of the hard drive - temperature, spindle speed. If you look at them from time to time, you can catch the moment when the disk began to “scrap” and send it in for repair in time.
3. Provide cooling. The HDD generates a lot of heat during operation, sometimes so much that the standard PC cooling system cannot cope with the load. If the user experiences this situation, it is worth adding a couple of fans to the system unit.
4. Choose the right power supply. If the user has an unevenly operating power supply, it can supply high voltage to the hard drive, which is guaranteed to “kill” the device.

Good afternoon, dear readers! 🙂

I think it would be useful for you and me to consider this question, which concerns the choice of a hard drive, or rather, to talk about their volumes.

A seemingly simple question: “How much space do you need?” causes a huge number of problems after the wrong decision. Perhaps you don’t quite understand what I mean yet, but now I’ll explain….

HDD- a seemingly simple device designed for storing information on a computer.

Nevertheless, this device has many parameters (and in order to choose the right hard drive you need to take them all into account, or contact a specialist), inattention to which leads to the biggest, without exaggeration, the most bitter and expensive problems who only meet with computers - loss of information. Data loss is the biggest problem a user can face. Data, as you know, is the highest value. These are some works that you have done over the course of months or years, a photo archive, valuable videos or text materials... Whatever! Personally, I experienced such a situation as once upon a time my HDD, which was large at that time and had a capacity of 400GB, failed irretrievably!!! All data I'm irretrievably lost- and there were a lot of them - regarding my business, work, life... I would need some things today, but this is no longer there... 🙁 This cannot be conveyed, but when this happens, you understand for the rest of your life the importance of data storage security...

Therefore, I think there is no need to explain this further to anyone, everything is already clear. This is exactly why, even if you saved on some other PC components, or chose them incorrectly, then ANYWAY when buying a PC, choosing a hard drive - IT IS MOST IMPORTANT!!! You can't save money on this! It's better to have someone help you specialist…

So, the first question in the series of articles is the size of the hard drive....

It is not enough to just roughly “estimate” how much space you need. We must again start from REQUIREMENTS to your PC and your tasks. If this is an office PC, 120-160 GB will be more than enough for the coming years.

If it is a multimedia computer, make sure that it has a HDD of at least 200-250GB. After all, multimedia is large volumes: photos, videos, just extraneous data...

A gaming computer should have a disk of at least 320GB - this is the minimum or optimal for now. But since data volumes are constantly growing rapidly, if you are building a PC with an eye to the future, it is better to take (for a gamer) a disk of 400GB or more. It will be enough for 3-4 years.

This is so - approximate estimates of what it's for... They're suitable if you don't have a PC right now and you just want to buy one. For those who have already worked with a PC:

See if you are running out of space on your old PC? Maybe it once happened that a friend brought you an amateur video from a vacation, but it was difficult for you to place this file, several GB in size, on your HDD? Take a closer look at all this, do the math... Look also at how much space is currently occupied on your hard drive(s)... Add to all this your plans for the future: Maybe you will play modern games, each of which is (modern) takes up from 5 to 10-15 gigabytes on disk? Maybe you plan to buy it later good photo or a video camera? The volumes of modern photos (about 10 MB picture in 8 megapixel resolution) and video are quite large. Add it all up and look what you get - how many gigabytes.

One more point: if you do not do this, but determine the HDD volume you “need” by eye, then in the future there may be problems such as lack of space, close to 100% HDD load. Then you will need to buy another, more capacious hard drive, install it in the PC along with this one, etc. the result is two (or several) small disks, which, among other things, create noise and are absolutely unprofitable. One capacious HDD will cost less than two (or even more so several) HDDs, the total equivalent to one capacious one.

Next, choosing the volume you need is half the battle. You also need to take care of the RELIABILITY of data storage. For example, a 500GB disk is 75% loaded - it stores your personal documents and files... HDD - can fail, the reception is irreversible, completely “out of the blue” completely and irrevocably!!! Conclusion - you need to take care of where to archive or copy “all your acquired goods” in case of a failure. Storing especially important data in a single copy and in one place is completely unacceptable!

The archiving device can be a writer DVD drive(if out of this 75%, you want to write down only the MOST VALUABLE). Or it will be another HDD. However, this is the topic of a separate article, let’s not mix everything together. Subscribe to RSS or stay tuned to be the first to read future articles!

So, I told you about how you need to select the size of your hard drive... Of course, this is not ALL that you NEED to pay attention to when purchasing, but this parameter is one of the main ones...

That's all for today! See you! 🙂

24.02.2018

Hard disk capacity. HDD capacity. Maximum HDD capacity

These are, of course, interesting, but also difficult times for the storage industry. The transition to high-resolution multimedia formats has significantly improved the visual component, but also has a corresponding impact on the requirements for data storage subsystems. The volume of digital audio, video and photos is constantly increasing, which requires more and more capacity from storage devices. Therefore, today 3.5" hard drives have already reached 750 GB. Unfortunately, performance cannot grow at the same speed.

There has been a series of acquisitions in the industry. Maxtor bought Quantum several years ago, after which the company merged with Seagate. Hitachi, Samsung and Western Digital still remain in the desktop hard drive market.

Seagate is now the leader in capacity, providing 750 GB for the 3.5" Barracuda 7200.10 drive, Samsung is famous for its quiet operation and good value capacity/price. Western Digital Raptor 10,000 rpm hard drives have been leading the way in performance for several years, although they were originally positioned for the professional market entry level. And Samsung can finally get ahead significantly with the release of hybrid hard drives. This is the only company in the four that produces not only hard drives, but also flash memory.

All modern 3.5" drives have a maximum read speed of at least 55 MB/s, and access time is 15 ms or less. The most high-speed models the maximum speed exceeds 70 MB/s, and the access time, on average, is 13 ms. Western Digital Raptor hard drives deliver speeds of over 85 MB/s with a very low access time of 8 ms. Ideal if you want to get applications to launch faster or simply boot Windows faster. Although you will have to pay for this with a higher price and lower capacity compared to traditional models. If you are interested in the performance of modern hard drives, check out the reviews in our section.

Of course, many will have a question: what do all these numbers mean in practice? How does a hard drive compare to other components in a PC? How does the performance of modern hard drives differ from old ones? Can a modern hard drive easily outperform older models?

This time we decided to add old hard drives to our testing. Yes, we tried to find really ancient models. Interestingly, they still work great, despite the fact that they were born in the era of MS DOS 5.0 and Windows 3.1.

Hard drives: from 40 MB to 750 GB, from 3,500 to 10,000 rpm

We decided to go back 15 years, when IDE hard drives with a capacity of 40 MB, which was quite decent by those standards at that time, just began to appear. We then took a mid-90s model (3.2 GB), then increased the capacity to double digits (10 GB) and finally upgraded the hard drive to 60 GB. Modern models are represented by the leaders of the hard drive market: Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 with 750 GB and Western Digital Raptor RD1500 with 150 GB and 10,000 rpm.

Here we have a 40 MB (yes, megabyte) hard drive with three platters spinning at 3500 rpm. The interface is a regular IDE. The hard drive was manufactured in 1991, and at that time it was a completely average model. The top Maxtor hard drive from the 7000 line had a capacity of 130 MB, distributed over eight platters. The hard drive had 32 or 64 KB of cache memory integrated, depending on the model. Specifications still available on the Maxtor website, if you look hard enough.

The capacity of 130 MB for the top model was then the limit, although the volume quickly increased to 170 and 240 MB. Interestingly, all hard drives at that time cost several hundred dollars. Today you get a thousand times more capacity, and at a lower price!

The hard drive is too old, so PCMark05 refused to run tests on it. But we were able to run the c"t magazine h2benchw 3.6 test. The average access time of the 7040A was 27 ms, which seems like an eternity compared to 8-15 ms for modern 3.5" hard drives. The interface bandwidth is 800 kB/s (0.8 MB/s) versus the current 80-200 MB/s. Real reading performance is also close to this value: h2benchw showed 600-700 kB/s, which can be compared to four times CD-ROM speed. Any modern drive, quite naturally, outperforms a 1991 hard drive.

The Quantum Fireball came five years after the 40MB Maxtor hard drive reviewed above. The capacity ranged from 1.6 to 6.4 GB. As you might imagine, the new generation has some improvements. Fireball ST 3.2A acquired a double cache (128 KB) and received a higher spindle speed - 5,400 rpm. The drive was one of the first to be equipped with a 33 MB/s UltraATA interface; in addition, it was the first to use magnetoresistive read/write heads.

The interface throughput was 31.3 MB/s, which is very close to the theoretical maximum, and the internal data transfer rate was stated at 132 Mbit/s (about 16 MB/s). In reality, we got almost 10 MB/s. If you do the math, this hard drive offers 80 times the capacity of the Maxtor model. Or 50 times more, if you compare the 6.4 GB Fireball with the top-end 130 MB Maxtor model. The speed increased approximately 13 times.

Around this time, users began to say goodbye to the old 16-bit FAT file system in favor of FAT 32 for Windows 95, NTFS for Windows NT, HPFS for OS/2, or ext2 for Linux. FAT16 is built on 16-bit cluster addressing. A cluster is the minimum disk element that is understandable to the controller. One FAT 16 cluster could hold a maximum of 32 KB, which with 65,536 possible addresses (2 16) gave a maximum capacity of 2,097,152 bytes or 2 GB.

Of course, this limitation could be circumvented by creating multiple partitions, but the best solution was still the new FAT 32 file system, in which cluster addressing was increased from 16 to 28 bits. This made it possible to address millions of clusters ranging in size from 4 to 32 KB, depending on the size of the partition. FAT 32 theoretically supports partitions up to 2 TB (terabyte, thousand gigabytes), but since a large partition capacity increases the size of the FAT 32 table exorbitantly (256 MB in the case of a 2048 GB partition), and for other reasons, it is better to use a more modern file system. For example, NTFS journal systems under Windows XP or ext3 under Linux.

With the release of the DeskStar 16GP line, IBM, then still a hard drive manufacturer, introduced Giant Magneto-Resistive (GMR) heads, an important step towards breaking the 10 GB capacity per hard drive. Indeed, the announcement of more sensitive GMR heads made it possible to increase the maximum hard drive capacity in IBM lines from almost 9 GB to 16.8 GB.

This line of hard drives came in different capacities: 3.2, 4.3, 6.4, 8.4, 10.1, 12.9 and 16.8 GB and used up to three platters. The hard drives were equipped with 512 KB of cache and an UltraATA/33 interface. DTTA-351010 showed maximum speed data transfer was 12.4 MB/s, while the interface throughput was 31.4 MB/s.

Seagate Barracuda hard drives, with capacities ranging from 6.8 to 26 GB, were the first 7,200 rpm desktop models. But the first generation was quite noisy, and the hard drives got noticeably warm. The second and third generations improved significantly in these respects, and the capacity increased to 40 GB. But only the fourth generation of 7,200 rpm desktop hard drives turned out to be truly fast and quiet.

The Barracuda ATA IV line featured higher data density, which allowed Seagate to reach capacities of up to 80 GB with just two platters. In addition, a distinctive feature of this line was the metal plate at the bottom, which protected the electronics of the disc. Seagate called it Seashield, very similar to the name of the Seashell plastic packaging. However, Seashield later had to be abandoned for price reasons.

The fourth Barracuda was one of the last generations of drives produced only for the parallel ATA interface, since at the end of 2003 the fifth generation Barracuda ATA V was announced with support for the Serial ATA interface and a capacity of up to 120 GB. All Barracuda drives of the fifth generation and higher use the Serial ATA or UltraATA/100 interface (like this model).

Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 750 GB and WD Raptor WD1500, 150 GB (2006)

We have two relatively new hard drives in front of us. In order not to repeat ourselves and not tell their characteristics again, we will provide links to the relevant reviews.

• Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 750 GB: superior capacity and performance
• WD1500AD Raptor-X Hard Drive: Leading Desktop Performance

The increase in recording density is impressive: over the past 15 years it has increased 10,000 times!

The hard drive industry is still looking for ways to increase recording density. The latest Perpendicular Magnetic Recording (PMR) technology uses vertical magnetic domain orientation instead of horizontal orientation, allowing more bits to be stored in the same area.

If you take the maximum capacity of 130 MB for 1991 and compare it with modern 750 GB hard drives, you can calculate: over the past 15 years, capacity has increased 5,700 times. If we compare the capacity of the plates, the difference will be even greater.

As you can see, the progress in recording density turned out to be quite significant. Unfortunately, hard drive performance has not grown at the same pace.

If we compare the performance of a 1991 Maxtor hard drive (0.7 MB/s) with a modern 750 GB Barracuda 7200.10 hard drive (64 MB/s), we get a 91x increase. If we compare it with 85 MB/s for a WD Raptor hard drive at 10,000 rpm, we get a 121-fold improvement.

Doesn't sound too happy. Now let's take into account the average size of files and programs. If the Microsoft Word executable file previously took up no more than a few megabytes and even less space in RAM, modern applications can easily “master” tens of megabytes. And they call additional code in the form of plugins, libraries and extensions. For example, Adobe Photoshop CS2 consumes more than 60 MB of RAM, and most of this information must be read from the hard drive. Or think about photographs: ten years ago we worked with JPEG files measuring 640x480 and containing several tens of kilobytes. Today we are no longer surprised by photographs of several megabytes with a resolution of 3872x2592.

Recording Density and Performance

If you compare the increase in recording density with the increase in performance, the discrepancy immediately becomes noticeable: almost 6,000 times more capacity and only 100 times more performance. In other words, capacity grew faster performance 60 times! What do our testing results say?

Look at the results. They clearly show that while hard drive performance has increased in absolute terms, performance relative to hard drive capacity has increased. decreased significantly! From this point of view, modern hard drives are no faster than older models. Judge for yourself.

In 1991, a 40 MB hard drive took 37 seconds to read the capacity of one platter (26 MB).
In 1998, a 3.2 GB hard drive took 3 minutes and 31 seconds to read the capacity of one platter (1.6 GB).
In 1999, a 10 GB hard drive took 5 minutes and 37 seconds to read the capacity of one platter (3.2 GB).
In 2004, a 60 GB hard drive took 18 minutes and 34 seconds to read the capacity of one platter (40 GB).
In 2006, a 750 GB hard drive took 52 minutes to read the capacity of one platter (200 GB).

Of course, this comparison is greatly simplified and does not take into account other factors such as the number and diameter of plates, rotation speed and average file size. The results will also be different if you take other hard drives and other capacities for comparison. But the trend will be the same: the time it takes to fill or read a full hard drive has increased significantly over the past 15 years.

Over the same 15 years, the hard drive market has seen a series of acquisitions and mergers. Maxtor bought Quantum several years ago, and by the end of 2006 Seagate will complete its merger with Maxtor.

Why is hard drive performance so important?

Any user can easily answer this question: just turn on your PC or laptop, after which you will notice that most of the delays and waits are associated with reading data from the hard drive. When Windows starts, it reads the information and fills in RAM. And although OS boot times have decreased in recent years (partly thanks to BIOS optimizations), and some PCs boot up in 15-20 seconds, hard drives are the bottleneck that significantly limits PC performance.

Who likes to wait 30 seconds or more for the computer to boot? How about waiting 20 seconds for a game or program to start? And the few seconds it takes to close the application are also not the best option.

Another one important problem- reservation. Reading the entire hard drive now takes almost forever. How long does it take to make a reservation? In recent years, along with the growth in the volume of user data, the time it takes to reserve it is also increasing. If documents can be copied quickly enough, then what about user databases of photos, videos and music?

Test configuration

Any modern hard drive is quite capable of handling your everyday data. And most of them provide good enough speed for everyday tasks. But if you don't like to wait, your budget is not limited by a student scholarship, or your requirements are simply high, then you can hardly do without a Western Digital Raptor 10,000 rpm hard drive. For everyone else, we can recommend a decent model at 7,200 rpm, it costs less, and also provides good capacity.

Over the past fifteen years, the capacity of hard drives has increased faster than productivity by more than an order of magnitude! This is why hard drives are the biggest bottleneck on your PC today. Whether you boot or shut down your computer, launch applications and games, write or read files, transfer large amounts of data, you will immediately notice how the performance is limited by the hard drive. Fast hard drives and interfaces reduce the tedious wait, but even high-performance RAID arrays on several hard drives do not allow you to get rid of it.

In any case, there is no one to blame here. Instead, we should appreciate all the work and genius of the engineers and scientists at hard drive companies who are trying to squeeze capacity, and with it performance, out of a technology that has essentially remained unchanged for the last 50 years. (The IBM 305 RAMAC drive was announced in 1956.)

Prospects

The productivity landscape is unlikely to change unless there is a revolution in technology. As long as hard drives are built on spinning platters, we are unlikely to get around the limitations of this physical mechanism. Fortunately, the new generation of hard drives are built on perpendicular write technology, which allows you to create hard drives with a capacity of several terabytes and squeeze the performance out of them even more.

Windows Vista will improve the situation on the software side. The new OS implements smart prediction and caching technologies, such as SuperFetch, which allow you to load the user's favorite applications into the RAM cache, resulting in significantly reduced startup times. Other technologies, such as flash-based hard drives, reduce access times to a minimum, but only at the expense of a high price per gigabyte. In addition, flash drives are not yet able to outperform hard drives in terms of data transfer speed.

32 GB Samsung Flash SSD: goodbye hard drives Legacy Hard Drive Products
Deskstar - ATA/IDE Desktop Hard Disk Drives

– the amount of data that can be placed on disk. The volume of modern ones that can be found on sale can reach 2 TB or 2000 GB. Manufacturers designate hard drive capacity as a multiple of 1000, not 1024, as it should be. And as a result, the physical volume declared as “2000 GB” is 1863 GB.

The capacity of the hard drive must be calculated depending on the tasks that will be assigned to it.

. How much do you need?

For office PCs 120-200 GB will be enough.

For multimedia computers you already need at least 500 GB, unless of course you are going to fill it with high-resolution video files.

One film, depending on the resolution (720p or 1080i), takes up from 4 to 10 GB on the hard drive;

A movie in Blu-Ray format takes up to 25 GB of space;

Season 1 of a popular series, depending on the quality, will take up from 6 to 120 GB on your disk. Moreover, we are talking about one season and all seasons can weigh quite a lot;

With music it's a little easier. One album in lossless format (FLAC, Ape) rarely weighs more than 600 MB, however, the complete discography of one group can take up even 20 GB, but this is rather an exception; generally, a discography of 12 albums takes 5 GB.

For gaming computers The volume must be at least 400 GB. Of course, nothing prevents you from choosing a larger hard drive, but you shouldn’t turn your hard drive into a storage for images and installed games that you don’t play.

It is worth considering that modern games already require up to 20 GB of free disk space for installation.

For myself personally, I see no reason to buy too large hard drives. Yes, the quality of digital content is growing quite quickly, and with it the size of this content is growing. But at the same time, the speed of Internet access also increases. And options are already being created when all content will be stored on special Internet servers, and the user will be able to view them without downloading. And for this you will need special systems in which the hard drive will be replaced with more powerful flash memory.

Comparative table of technology development

Instructions

Information about the volume of hard disk is available in the BIOS, and you can get it even if there is no operating system installed and it is impossible to open the system unit case. Turn on the computer's power and press the DEL key (less commonly, the F1, F2, F10 keys). The BIOS Setup main menu will be displayed. Depending on the BIOS version, the name of the option that determines the drive parameters varies. Its name can be IDE HDD Auto-Detection, IDE configuration. Select the disk of interest in the list of all installed media and click the Enter key. A window with HDD characteristics will open, where the size is indicated disk. To convert size disk to gigabytes, divide the number of megabytes by 1024.

Using the Windows operating system, obtain characteristics disk can be done from the Computer Management console. Right-click on “My Computer” and select “Manage.” In the left window, go to the “Management” snap-in disk mi." Launch the Properties command by right-clicking on graphical representation disk labeled "Disk 0", "Disk 1", etc., depending on what drives you have installed. In the Properties dialog box, go to the Volumes tab. The size will be indicated here disk and the size of the volumes it contains.

Can be used to determine volume disk utilities third party developers. One of these many utilities is HDD Life Pro. It's easy to find on the Internet. The program is shareware and is quite enough to determine the size of your hard drive. disk. Download the program, install it on your computer and run it. The window that opens will display detailed information about all parameters disk, including its volume, which will be indicated under the name disk at the top of the window.

Volume or capacity is one of the characteristics of a substance or body in space. The unit of measurement for volume is cubic centimeters, cubic meters or liters; in the English system of units, volume is also measured in gallons and barrels. The method for measuring volume depends on the shape of the object and its linear dimensions.

Instructions

The volume of geometric bodies is measured in cubic meters or cubic centimeters. The method of calculation depends on the shape of the body.

For simple geometric bodies there are corresponding formulas, for example, the volume of a sphere of radius R is calculated by the formula

V = (4/3) * π * R³, where R is the radius, π is the number of π

The volume of a cone with a given base radius and height has the formula

V = (1/3) * π * R² * h, where R is the radius, h is the height of the cone, π is the number of π

The volume of an arbitrary body can be calculated using integral calculus.

If a body of rotation is given, defined by the function y = f(x), then its volume can be determined by the formula given in the figure.

For a cylindrical body with a base R, which is bounded from above by a surface z = f(x, y), the volume is calculated using a double integral.

Video on the topic

The size of the hard drive does not directly affect the power of the computer. But, nevertheless, its size determines how much information you can store on your computer. After all, even a fairly capacious hard drive can fill up in just a few months. Finding out the capacity of your hard drive is quite simple. And if its size seems too small for you, it’s okay, because you can always buy another hard drive.

You will need

• - Computer with Windows OS;
• - AIDA64 Extreme Edition program.

Instructions

One of the easiest ways to find out the size of a hard disk- this is systemic. Open My Computer. Click on the hard section disk right click mice. In the context menu that appears after this, select “Properties”.

In the window that appears, find the “Capacity” section. Information about its capacity will be available there. Once you know the capacity of one partition, do the same operation with the next one. Thus, the sum of the hard partitions disk and will be its total capacity.

The computer was originally invented to calculate data and solve various problems. But an important function of the computer was the storage of various data. The amount of information stored depends on the storage capacity. In this article we will discuss a simple, but for many, controversial problem in choosing the right hard drive capacity characteristics. So what size hard drive should you choose for your personal computer?

The capacity (volume) of a hard drive is an indicator of the maximum amount of information that your hard drive can store. Nowadays, hard drives with capacities ranging from 100 GB to 5000 GB (5 TB) are common.

So, let's consider what is the optimal and maximum hard drive capacity for the average personal computers presented in stores today.

Having looked at several online stores, we analyzed the hard drives presented there and saw quite clearly that the maximum capacity of drives is in the region of 4-5TB, and the cost fluctuates around 300-500 US dollars.

We cannot say that the presented drives will appeal to a wide range of buyers, since the prices are not very friendly. Yes to the average user and you don’t need such a large storage device.

How much data to choose

This leads us to the conclusion that such a storage capacity will be excessive, and it is only suitable for specific requirements. But we shouldn’t exclude the fact that there are people who like to collect films or games that just lie and “gather dust” on their hard drive, but there are very few such strange people, since almost everyone has the Internet. Or there are people who really need to keep the sources of uncompressed video files after editing. Such files really take up a lot of space, so you may need several 5TB drives. If you are a fan of shooting videos or storing a lot of films, then this option is just for you.

But returning to the review of online stores computer equipment, we see that drives ranging in size from 500 to 1000GB are the most popular. For an ordinary personal computer, 500GB is enough, in our opinion. Let's explain why: volume installed software(operating system, various programs) will not exceed the size of 50-60GB, music will take up (if you are not a music lover) about 10-60GB, movies, games will take up space in the region of 100-150GB, everything else will take about 20-50GB. As a result, after several years of accumulating information, you will have about 250GB occupied, and another 250GB will simply be empty. If you follow these calculations, then for especially economical users a hard drive of 250-320GB will be enough.

We note that everything presented in this article is purely individual, but the above calculations will fully cover the average user’s request for a personal computer. So before choosing a hard drive for your personal computer, you should first think about what exactly you will store on the hard drive. Even if the calculations are wrong, you can always buy another drive. If you have a laptop, you can always buy an external hard drive. Of course, when choosing a hard drive, you need to take into account many factors, such as price or capacity, data transfer speed, but more on that later.

Such are the arguments on the topic of the volume of hard drives on a personal computer. Ultimately, the choice of storage capacity is yours.

Why is a hard drive called a hard drive?

Computer hard drives began to be called Winchesters in the United States in the 70s of the twentieth century. Then IBM released the first analogue of modern hard drives: a device consisting of two cabinets, inside of which there were magnetic disks with a capacity of 30 MB each.

It was marked with the inscription “30x30” - exactly the same inscription was present on the rifle of the famous company “Winchester”. At first, hard drives were called “hard drives” as a joke, but soon the name firmly stuck to them and became almost official.

Not everyone knows that a computer has several hard drives. For example, when opening the My Computer program, we see drive icons C, D, E, F. But this does not mean that you have one hard drive - in most cases these are several logical drives, onto which the only physical drive installed on the computer is allocated.

But it also happens that there are several physical drives installed on the computer, if you are not afraid to open your system unit and find them, if, again, you know what they look like.

Each of the hard drives can be marked with one Latin letter or, in turn, can be divided into several logical drives. This is convenient, for example, for storing films, games, documents, and photos separately. And also in case of disk defragmentation by programs, which will take less time.

So how can you determine the number of hard drives on your computer without opening it?

Everything is very simple. Click "Start" and right-click on "Computer". You can also click on the My Computer icon on the desktop, unless this icon does not have an arrow at the bottom, that is, it is not a shortcut. In the context menu that appears, select “Management”.

The following window will open:

Here you need to select the “Disk Management” section. The display will show information about the physical drives and the logical volumes to which they are allocated. The following illustration shows an example of one hard drive divided into two logical drives. There are also two hidden section, intended for the system needs of the computer - they are not of interest to us.

And here we see two hard drives at once - Disk0 and Disk1:

Disk 0 is divided into logical ones - C, D, E, F. We don't see all the letters here. If you have Windows installed on Disk0, then even after removing Disk1, the operating system will boot smoothly.

Disk 1 is solid and not divided into logical partitions, marked with the letter G.

How to find out the real size of your hard drive

For a better understanding, manufacturers and sellers indicate the traditional disk capacity: 40, 60, 120, 160, 320, 500, 640 GB and so on. However, in reality it is always less than stated, because:
1 GB = 1024 MB
1 MB = 1024 KB
1 KB = 1024 bytes

AND So, we see that logical drive C has a capacity of 400.76GB, and physical drive G has a capacity of 931.51GB. The total volume of drive C can be found by adding the volumes of its logical drives.

First of all, you need to understand that there are 2 types of “screws” (hard drives) for desktop computers, mainly differing in the type of connection:

1. IDE(aka ATA, aka PATA) - obsolete, but still used type of hard drive. Visually, it can be distinguished by a wide cable socket (40 pins in 2 rows) at the end of the HDD (hard drive) itself and four thick contacts on the right for connecting the power cable. You can read more about the ATA standard on Wikipedia

1. SATA(SATA2) - next, more advanced stage in the development of the previous standard. It features much better data exchange speeds. And this means recording, copying, deleting your favorite movies, music, and cinema, the computer will be faster.

Main characteristics of the hard drive: interface, capacity, buffer size, physical size (form factor), random access time, data transfer rate, number of I/O operations per second, spindle speed, noise level.

The first thing you should pay attention to when choosing a hard drive is interface- a device that converts and transmits signals between the HDD and the computer. The most common interfaces now are: SCSI, SAS, ATA (IDE, PATA), Serial ATA (SATA), eSATA and USB.

The SCSI interface has a speed of 640MB/s and is used mainly on servers; SAS is its higher-speed analogue (12 Gbit/s), backward compatible with the interface SATA.

ATA (IDE, PATA) - predecessor SATA, now it is no longer relevant due to its low speed of 150MB/s.

eSATA and USB - interfaces for external hard drives.

Serial ATA (SATA)- This is the most common hard drive interface. This is what you should focus on when choosing a hard drive. There are currently several variations SATA. From a physical point of view, they are no different (the interfaces are compatible), the differences are only in speed: (SATA-I - 150 MB/s, SATA-II - 300 MB/s, SATA-III - 600 MB/s).

As for capacity: everything is simple. The larger it is, the better, since more information can be recorded. This characteristic does not affect the performance of the hard drive in any way. Defined by the user based on the need for space to store files. The table below shows the average sizes of the main file types that you should pay attention to when choosing HDD.

The hard drive is one of the key components of every computer. It is used to store information. The operating system is installed on it, user data is recorded - photos, music, videos, programs are installed, and so on. The hard drive must be reliable, otherwise the user may lose his data. In this article, we will consider how to choose a hard drive, what parameters to pay attention to, when it is better to give preference to SSD drives and other issues.

What kind of discs are there?

In the minds of users there is a well-established familiar concept of “hard drive”. But if earlier it meant one device made on magnetic platters (HDD), now this concept also includes hybrid disks (SSHD) and solid-state disks (SSD). Let's take a closer look at each type of disk:

• HDD disk. The cheapest of the three options listed, based on cost per quantity free space. Modern HDDs have a capacity of several hundred to several thousand gigabytes. Such disks have a speed of about 120-150 MB/s. They can be used to store any information;
• SSD disk. It is not entirely correct to call an SSD drive a disk, since there are no disk elements as such. This is a solid-state device, something like a flash drive, with high operating speed (from 500 MB/s). The cost of such drives in terms of volume is significantly higher than the price HDD drives. On sale you can find SSD drives of various sizes, from tens to hundreds of gigabytes. There are also terabyte options, but their price is extremely high. Typically, SSD drives are used to install an operating system on them.

Note: SSD drives There are different ones, depending on the type of memory on which they are built: V-NAND, 3D NAND.

• SSHD disk. This is a hybrid drive that includes elements of SSD and HDD drives. That is, the main volume of such a drive is carried out on magnetic platters (HDD), and a small volume is solid-state (SSD). Typically, the solid-state part of SSHD disks is used to install the operating system, and the main information is stored on the HDD component.

Physical sizes of hard drives

Currently, hard drives on sale can be divided according to physical dimensions (that is, width, length, height) into two groups:

• 3.5 inches are standard HDD drives for computers (stationary system units);
• 2.5 inches are SSD drives, as well as HDD drives for laptops.

Please note: If you install in a system unit computer hard 2.5-inch drive, you will most likely need to purchase a special additional mount that allows you to securely fix it in the case. With some models SSD drives This mount is included in the kit.

Hard drive connectors

Each hard drive has 2 main connectors:

Hard disk capacity

The main parameter that you should pay attention to when choosing a drive for your computer is its capacity. Depending on what tasks a particular drive and computer will face, we can identify some algorithms for selecting the optimal volume.

Hard disk capacity (HDD) for a computer or laptop

The Windows operating system currently occupies about 10-20 GB on the drive, depending on the version and edition. Accordingly, the entire remaining volume of the drive will be allocated for storing other information - programs, multimedia, documents and other things. We recommend using the following methods for selecting a hard drive with the optimal capacity:

• When choosing a hard drive for an office computer on which you work with documents and interact with the Internet, you can choose a drive option from 320 to 500 gigabytes;
• For home computer, on which movies, various programs, etc. will be stored, it is better to choose a drive with a capacity of at least 1 terabyte. Considering that nowadays photographs and films weigh more and more due to their high resolution, a drive of up to 1 terabyte will fill up with information extremely quickly;
• For a home computer that will be used as a data storage, and games and heavy applications will be installed on it (for example, for editing or creating 3D graphics), it is better to choose a hard drive with a capacity of 2 terabytes or more.

Please note: If you have a monitor connected to your computer that supports 4K resolution, it makes sense to choose larger hard drives, since one 4K movie can weigh about 100 gigabytes.

SSD storage capacity for a computer or laptop

The choice of SSD storage capacity depends entirely on the buyer’s finances. SSD drives are much faster than HDDs, but they also cost several times more.

If you need an SSD drive, install only operating system, then you can choose options with a capacity of 32 gigabytes or more. But it is worth noting that in some situations it is more profitable to purchase an SSHD drive, that is, a hybrid drive with a small amount of solid-state memory for installing an operating system.

If an SSD drive is purchased for a computer on which the user actively works with “heavy” applications, for example, Adobe Photoshop, After Effect, Sony Vegas and others, it makes sense to install such applications on a solid-state drive so that they run faster. Accordingly, you need to choose the disk size based on how much space such applications will take up on it. An SSD drive of 128-256 gigabytes will be sufficient for most users.

Please note: SSD drives of several terabytes can now be found on sale. The price for them is tens of times different from the cost of HDD drives of similar volumes.

Which is better: one large disk or several small ones?

When choosing a hard drive for a computer, the user may wonder whether it is best to purchase one drive or several.

If you purchase a drive for a laptop, you have to take into account the free space in the case laptop computer. Most often, it has space for one or two disks.

If you purchase a hard drive for desktop computer, which has enough space to install disks, it is better to buy several drives rather than one large capacity.

It is optimal when the operating system is on a separate disk (preferably an SSD), so that if a problem arises with the drive, other files will not be affected. It is also better to store work programs and files on a separate drive, while backing up the most necessary things to another large hard drive.

It is convenient to purchase a hard drive with a capacity of several terabytes (it may not be the fastest in terms of operating speed) in order to store various information on it - backups, photos, films, etc. Set aside a separate hard drive (SSD) for the system, and another for work programs.

Please note: When purchasing a hard drive for a desktop computer, you should not choose the SSHD option. Such solutions are aimed primarily at laptops.

How to choose a hard drive: characteristics

Hard drive capacity is an important parameter, but the speed and durability of the device does not depend on it. There are a number of parameters of HDD and SSD drives that directly affect their operation. We recommend paying attention to them when selecting a drive.

Rotational speed The primary parameter for each hard drive made using magnetic plastic, that is, for HDD and SSHD options. SSD drives do not have rotating elements, so they have this parameter

cannot be specified.

Its operating speed depends on the rotation speed of the disk spindle. The rotation speed parameter is limited, and it cannot be increased indefinitely, otherwise this will lead to a greater chance of device failure. Currently, most of the disks on the market have a rotation speed of 5400 to 7200 rpm.

The higher the rotation speed, the faster data is read from the disk. But at the same time, the device works more, heats up more, and consumes more energy.

Memory Buffer Size Under Buffer Size hard memory disk refers to the size of the cache memory. That is, it is memory that allows you to quickly perform minor operations. In modern hard drives, the memory buffer size does not exceed 128 MB. Wherein for normal work hard The disk has enough buffer of 32 MB

, since the information sent to the hard drive cache is most often insignificant.

This parameter refers to the speed of the hard drive. It depends on the device components themselves, as well as on the rotation speed if we are talking about HDD or SSHD drive options.

In modern hard drives (HDD, SSHD), the normal read speed is about 150-200 MB/s. We do not recommend considering purchasing slower hard drives that have a linear read speed below 100 MB/s, especially if an operating system will be installed on such a drive.

Please note: Slow, large-capacity hard drives can be considered as information storage, for example, for storing photos.

As for SSD drives, they are much faster. On average, the speed of consumer solid state drives is at the level of 450-500 Mb/s. There are also slower (and cheaper) options, but choosing them is not advisable due to cost and characteristics; it is better to give preference to a high-speed HDD.

Important: Linear read speed is usually not indicated in the specifications of a hard drive - HDD or SSHD. You can check it using applications. For SSD drives, the read speed is indicated.

Linear write speed

As the name suggests, this is the speed at which information is written to the hard drive. Typically, disks have a linear write speed that is lower than their linear read speed. This is due to the fact that this parameter has virtually no effect on the speed of the disk - loading time of the operating system, program response, and so on.

Important: For high-quality SSD drives, the linear read speed is equal to the linear write speed.

Access time

Another important parameter to pay attention to is access time. The speed of reading and writing information to the hard drive directly depends on it. The shorter the access time, the better. This time indicates how long when the hard drive is accessed by the system, the drive responds, that is, provides the necessary data.

For HDD drives, access time usually varies from 13 to 15 ms, if we are talking about high-quality drives. It is not recommended to purchase disks with a higher indentation time, especially if this drive will contain an operating system. This will seriously slow down your entire computer.

For SSD drives, manufacturers usually do not specify the access time parameter, since it is hundreds of times lower than that of HDD drives.

The best manufacturers of HDD and SSD drives

There are dozens of hard drives on the market various manufacturers. Depending on who produced the drive, the duration of its uninterrupted operation depends. When purchasing a hard drive, we recommend giving preference to trusted manufacturers, such as:

• Seagate- a company whose main activity is the production of SSD and HDD drives. This manufacturer has patents for many key technologies that allow them hard drives work faster than competitors' options;
• Samsung- the largest brand, which, among other things, produces hard drives. Laptops often come with Samsung hard drives installed by default;

Everything you need to know about using hard drives larger than 2TB in Windows PCs

Introduction:

In fact, this FAQ is designed to explore the possibility of integrating 2.5 TB, 3 TB and higher hard drives into various desktop computer systems.

Understanding the difficulties that may arise after purchasing a 3 TB hard drive, some manufacturers of hard drives and motherboards decided to make life as easy as possible for customers by creating specialized technologies and utilities that can provide support for such hard drives.

Gigabyte is one of the few motherboard manufacturers that still does not use EFI BIOS even in the latest boards, so support for high-capacity hard drives has become especially important for them. Thanks to DualBIOS technology, the company was able to implement support for 3 TB hard drives quite quickly and easily. New technology, which is an add-on DualBIOS was named and made it possible to organize hardware support for 3 TB HDD even for installing an operating system on it.

For those boards that do not support Hybrid EFI, the company has developed software GIGABYTE 3TB+ Unlock Utility, which allows you to use large capacity drives as boot or extra hard disk in all operating systems of the Windows family, including 32-bit Windows version XP. In this case, you can create both MBR and GPT partitions.

Today, this utility will help owners of the following Gigabyte motherboard models:

Subsequently, Gigabyte plans to improve the GIGABYTE 3TB+ Unlock Utility to provide support for more motherboards.

Despite the fact that maternal ASUS boards With last generation Intel chipsets use EFI BIOS, the manufacturer also thought about ensuring the operation of large-capacity HDDs on the rest of its boards and released free utility with the same functionality as the competitor. You can also create GPT or MBR partitions, however, no version of the Windows operating system can boot from a partition with a GPT table of contents.

ASUS Disk Unlocker can work with motherboards based on the following chipsets:

Seagate was one of the first manufacturers to introduce its 3 TB hard drives, and is also the only manufacturer today that offers the DiscWizard utility, which allows you to use Seagate drives larger than 2.2 TB in systems with motherboards not equipped with an EFI BIOS. At the same time, a 3 TB hard drive can become bootable even when using 32-bit versions of the operating systems Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows XP.

In addition to the ability to make a 3 TB Seagate hard drive bootable or secondary, this utility will help you transfer all your data, including your operating system, to a new 3 TB hard drive.

The utilities and technologies presented above significantly expand the possibilities for using hard drives with a capacity of more than 2.2 TB in modern (and not so modern) computers.

Update from 06/08/2011

As practice shows, installing an operating room Windows system 7 64-bit on a GPT partition is very difficult even with an EFI BIOS, so it is strongly recommended to use the following scheme if you need to install the OS on a 3 TB hard drive:

This way we can use the entire hard drive capacity.

Note: The GIGABYTE 3TB+ Unlock utility, unlike a similar product from a competitor, worked not only on motherboards Gigabyte boards, but also on boards from other manufacturers (tested on MP and).

If new information becomes available about the compatibility of hard drives with capacities of 2.5 TB, 3 TB and higher, the FAQ will be updated.