Guide to Hard Disk Drives

Hard Disk Drives/HDDs.

You don't have to be a Tech Wiz to know the term. Hard Disk Drives are just one of many components of a PC system. However, although you may be familiar with the term, do you know what HDDs actually do? Do you know about the different types of HDDs that are present, and how they are different?

If you are looking for answers, you've come to the right place.

Don't worry, I'll put lots of analogies and use simple terms so that everybody will have a clear understanding of what's going on.

Let's begin.

What are Hard-Disk Drives (HDDs) and What do they Do?:

Let's compare a PC system to a human body. Main Hardware Components of a Computer include: CPU, RAM, Graphics card and HDD. All 4 of these make up the "Brain" of the Computer and direct overall performance of the system.

CPU is equivalent to Overall Intellectual Capacity.
RAM is equivalent to Short-Term Memory.
Graphics card is equivalent to Communication Skills.
HDD is equivalent to "Long-Term Memory."

PC files, such as Word Documents, Games, Video files are all stored in HDDs. There they stay, until someone decides to erase the content.

In terms of PC gaming, the performance of HDD affects the loading time. Faster the Hard Drive, shorter you have to wait until you play the Game.

There, that was easy wasn't it? Let's move on.

Different Types of Hard-Disk Drives:

There are 2 Main Types of HDDs present in the market currently:

1) Conventional Hard Drives: What majority of PC systems use.
2) Solid-State Drives: New and improved form of PC storage.

"Conventional Hard Drives" are what most people have on their PC system. These types of HDDs can hold enormous amount of content, as some go up to 1TB and even 2TB (1000 Gigabytes) of storage space.

There is a way to tell if one Conventional Hard Drive is better than another by looking at the "RPM"-"Rotations Per Minute". Conventional Hard Drives use a Rotating Component in their system called a "Platter" (They are disks).
Faster the spin, better the performance.

Majority of Conventional Hard Disk Drives have 5400 or 7200RPM.
Gaming PC use 10000RPM or greater for higher performance.

"Solid-State Drives" are relatively new system in the PC hardware. SSDs are the storage component used in iPods and USBs. Hmm...let's picture a USB stick or an iPod Touch. How are they like? Small? Light?
You could probably guess where this is heading.

SSDs are smaller, lighter and faster forms of storage than the Conventional HDDs. They have no moving component in their system (so they don't make that "Wheeeing" Sound), so they are less prone to malfunction. They can take more pressure (ie. you drop it on the floor etc) and many PC Game Enthusiasts prefer the SSDs over Conventional HDDs.

Do SSDs have a downside? Yes they do.
They are Very Very Expensive.

To give you an example, a 256GB SSD is more expensive than 1TB Conventional HDD.

This is why SSDs with small storage spaces are used frequently (Like a USB Stick or an iPod). However, in the future, SSDs are something to look forward to for higher PC performance options.

Types of HDD Interface:

Alright, it kinda looks like the term is scary, but it's not. The title simply means, the type of "plug-in" a HDD use to connect to the Motherboard (Circuit where every PC hardware is connected) on a Computer.

There are 2 main types of HDD Interface:

1) SATA I - File Transfer Rate of 1.5Gbits/s
2) SATA II - File Transfer Rate of 3.0 Gbits/s

There is also one more interface, called SATA III which has faster file transfer rate than the two above, but it is not used frequently at this point.

Basically, it is how fast Data is transferred from HDDs. Along with the RPM, the SATA interface affects the performance speed of a HDD.

One important thing to note is that 1.5Gbits is NOT the same as 1.5GB (Gibabytes). 8Bits is approximately equal to 1Byte, and therefore, 1.5GBits are roughly equivalent to 150MBs (I know...it's more like one-tenth, but that happens in Computer fields).

When building or upgrading your own PC, knowing the type of SATA interface becomes very important, because the HDD will not plug in to a different Interface outlet.

RAID:

RAIDs are Configurations of Multiple HDDs for unique purpose, either for Higher Performance or Mirroring (Protecting Data Loss). RAID systems are used frequently in Gaming Computers.

2 Common form of RAIDs found are RAID 0 and RAID 1.

RAID 0 - DATA is spread among 2 Hard Drives which improves performance speed of HDDs.

RAID 1- DATA for one disk is "Mirrored," to prevent risk of DATA loss. The overall storage space is reduced (eg. 2 x 500GB HDDs in RAID 1 will have 500GB of space since one disk is used for backup).

That's about it.
See, that wasn't too bad. Was it?

Last Words:

That pretty much sums up what HDDs are and their functions and applications.

Thank You So Much for Reading my Article. I Hope it Helped.

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