Computer Drives

Computer drives are key hardware components; install new hard drive with care. Do not purchase cheap external hard drives unless cheap also includes good quality. Use external hard drive data recovery protocols to provide a back up for your system.

The most common of the computer drives today is the Hard Disk Drive which is usually just called a hard drive or hard disk or HD. A hard drive is a non-volatile storage device that stores digital data on magnetic platters.

 

Install New Drive: What Is A Hard Drive?

In these pages, we'll take a look at how hard drives and DVD drives work, we'll look at internal and external drives, and how to care for your hard drive.

Almost everything you do on a computer starts or ends with the hard drive.

It is the main storage location for your operating system and installed system applications.

Here, I'll take a look at how a hard drive works and what makes it tick. I'll explain platters and spindles, actuators and heads.

I will also take a look at how hard drives actually store and retrieve data, data capacities, and read/write times. And I'll make some recommendations on types of drives and how to maintain, and recycle, them.

To back up your system, consider cheap external hard drives (however make sure that you carefully review and compare because cheap in a hard drive is not as important as stable, reliable and a quality product).

The use of external hard drive data recovery utilities and tools are also critical to an efficient running system.

This will give you a solid foundation on what to look for when you are looking to upgrade a hard drive or install a new hard drive.

Note: If you're replacing and/or building your own computer, we recommend using a computer service to ensure professional and secure data erasure, wiping or disk destruction, environmentally-friendly recycling or disposal, selling and/or purchasing of excess equipment, and IT asset management. These services are necessary when you want to dispose of your old computer (please don't just send it to the dump - it has data on it that needs to be erased).

How A Hard Drive Works

 

Internal Hard Drives

 

We'll take a look here at internal drives. We'll look at the differences between them and what to take into consideration when looking to increase your storage capacity.

I'll discuss how to add a hard drive into your system and things to verify before buying one.

I'll talk about the different form factors and interfaces that today's computer drives use.

This will help you to decide what type of internal hard drive you need when you are looking to add more storage.

Internal Hard Drives

 

External Hard Drives

 

The first external hard drives were quite large and not really portable. These shrank down and became today's internal hard drive.

Now external drives are becoming more and more popular for use as backup drives or storage of multimedia. We'll look at the different options that are out there and how to best decide what type and size of external drive to get.

This article will give you a good idea of what to look for when you decide to add an external drive to your computer. (Don't forget to use external hard drive data recovery tools as part of your back-up or crash recovery plan.)

External Hard Drives

Hard Drive Care

Give your hard drive some care, and your hard drive will care for you.

We'll look at some of the different things you can do to keep your hard drive cleaned up and running smooth. This includes hard drive defragmentation, system clean-up, and general system maintenence.

Keeping your hard drive cleaned up will not only keep your system running smoother, but it will also extend the life of your hard drive. When a hard drive has little 'movement' to perform, the parts will last longer.

Hard Drive Maintenance

DVD Drives

 

DVD drives are pretty standard on today's computers, both the laptop and desktop variety. From data storage to full length movies to applications, the DVD drive has become a must and has pretty much replaced the floppy drive.

We'll also take a look here at the different types and formats of DVD's. This article goes over what to look for when buying a DVD drive and things that you should take into consideration.

Not sure if you should get a Blu-ray drive for your computer? This will help you make that decision by showing you the pros and cons of Blu-ray.

DVD Drives

 

 

Western Digital Velociraptor

The Velociraptor is the latest drive offering from Western Digital. This is a 10,000 RPM drive which puts it into the enthusiast market. With very fast read and write times comes a higher price tag. This drive is the 2.5" form factor, and as such, comes pre-installed in what they are calling the "icepack" for easy installation into a desktop hard drive bay. Check out this computer drive's review.

Read the Review

 

 

Remember that no matter how good the drive is you need to conduct regular computer backups to save the information on your computer.

Read more about Computer Software Applications.

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