Recent articles covered the 'brains' of the computer (the CPU) and its short-term memory (the RAM). This week we turn to the filing cabinet for long-term storage ie. the hard disk drive.
The hard disk drive (HDD) is so-called because in the good ol' days you could save computer data and programs on tape, on quite literally floppy drives, or these solid and heavy 'hard' drives. HDDs are still hard, of course, but are radically different to the earlier generations.
In principle, however, they remain the same. It is a shiny rectangular metal box with a connector for power and a connector for data communications. Typical computers come with only one HDD, but it is quite easy to add a second, or even third and fourth.
There are two important things to consider where HDDs are concerned – the size of the storage available, and the technology used to connect it to the computer (the data cable). Size used to be measured in hundreds of megabytes (Mb) but nowadays is measured in gigabytes (one thousand megabytes makes a gigabyte). A common size for a desktop computer will be 60 or 80 Gb, although much larger sizes are easily available and fast reducing in cost. For example, a 250Gb disk can be found for Vt20,000 (not necessarily in Vanuatu though, duties are restrictively high).
A 60Gb drive provides bucket loads of space, and is likely to be filled only by those with thousands of songs or who use the computer for video editing. It would certainly be difficult to fill up 60Gb with your own emails and documents even if you are a prodigious writer.
Where the connection is concerned, this only becomes a factor if you want to add another disk (the much easier scenario) or replace the current one (requiring a re-install of your operating system and a copy/restore of all your data and electronic “stuff”). Until recently, the norm was an “IDE” connection, involving a ribbon cable (because it looks like a ribbon!) with 34 pins. The first disk has to be set as Master by a tiny switch on the HDD, and the second becomes a Slave. Most computers have a Primary and a Secondary IDE connection, meaning you can have at most 4 internal HDDs.
Now we are seeing the advent of SATA drives, featuring a much smaller/thinner cable and higher transfer speeds. These also use connector plugs on the computers motherboard to link to the HDD, and also allow multiple HDDs.
If you need extra space, you can bypass the above technicalities by simply buying an external HDD, for example getting one with a USB connection (same as for cameras, printers, etc.). This is a very straightforward option, but suffers from rather slower data transfer compared to an internal HDD. Great for storage and archiving, not so good for realtime processing of very big files (eg. video editing, movie watching).
Latest technologies are promising terabytes of data (ie. thousands of gigabytes) on something about the size of a sugar cube. Enough, they say, to fit a person's lifetime of data. And you thought blogging was uninteresting...
Questions? - Merlin Pacific IT provide effective & efficient business IT. Join VIGNET (Vanuatu Internet User Group) email discussions, register at tinyurl.com/zcusl
