Choosing your hard drive

Last update on June 3, 2009 09:35 AM by jak58
Published by jak58

Choosing your hard drive







Specifications


The memory cache


The cache improve overall performance by storing data which are the mostly used , improving the access time to the elements. It is therefore important to have as much as possible...! The cache size varies from 8 to 32MB depending on the disk drive.

The different speeds of rotation


The speed of rotation of the disk determines the access time. ( the time needed for the HDD to access a specific data on a specific physical location on the disk.

The different speeds are:
5400 rpm (mostly used for laptops, provide excellent performance)
7200 rpm (the mostly used rotation speed. Used into the hard drives for laptops or desktop)
10 000 rpm (very popular for Gamers who take one or two of these drives and set the in a RAID0 configuration)
15 000 rpm (restricted to servers, these drives offer outstanding performance)

RAID


The aim is to make multiple hard drives act as single virtual hard disk, by multiplying the transfer rates by the amount of Hard Drive you got. This solution offers exceptional performance, provided that you have two (or more) identical hard disk drives.

Conclusion


Based upon these technical characteristics , I hope you will be now able to choose wisely your HDD.
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