By Andreas Lee

Western Digital drives

Earlier, digital data storages are not simple machines but big mainframes that take half of your office space, work very slowly, and have low capacity. That era was over, and it is changed to small sized hard drives which have impressive performance and ultra capacity sized.

Recently, hard drives’ size has become one of most searched innovations in hard drive market. The best example in this small sized digital storages period is Western Digital drives that come in reliable form and large capacity.

Western Digital drives face the market challenge for big size hard drives’ capacity with high quality performance. In other words, Western Digital has created a distinctive culture in purchasing internal hard drives.

In early 2003, Western Digital Raptor (often marketed as WD Raptor) has become a part of Western Digital drives. This WD360GD raptor series is the first incarnation of raptor series satisfying the gamers with its unbelievable 10 000 RPM spindle speed run on one platter and has 16 MB buffer size with 36 GB storage capacity. WD360GD is the first ATA drive which operates at 10 000 spindle speed.

These internal Western Digital drives were synonymous with first class performance.

One year after that, Western Digital released the new brother of Raptor series, WD740GD that gave more space for users with 74 GB, quieter than the first generation, and had 2 platters.

Last year in April 2008, Western Digital created the fourth generation of Western Digital raptor series namely WD VelociRaptor WD3000. These internal Western Digital drives still have a same spindle speed and buffer size, the difference is only on their capacity. The newest Raptor has 300 GB storage.

WD VelociRaptor provides a constant performance same as its predecessor even if it contained hundred gigabytes of data. It offers fast data access, sustained data transfer rates, and IOPS. Moreover, the temperature and noise level of Western Digital drives kept down.

All of these features are not enough for Western Digital. The physical size of internal Western Digital drives managed to be kept as small as possible. Because of their size, they don’t look like common desktop drive but more similar to a laptop drive.

I suggest you to check out my other guides on: tips for disk recovery and camcorders hard drive

By Andreas Lee

Hard drive is a very complicated hardware in a computer. Firstly, you must know exactly either you want to attach it as Master or Slave when you want to install an IDE hard drive. Set it to Master if you want to load Operating System (Windows, Macintosh, Linux, etc.) from it.

ide hard drive

In another case, if you already have an IDE hard drive as Master and install a new one just for an additional storage, then set the new IDE hard drive to Slave. Jumper is required to be moved on the back of IDE hard drive each time this setting changed.

Most people think this is hard to do because they don’t know how to do it. Practically, changing an IDE hard drive’ jumper setting is very simple. You can find jumper configuration on the back of IDE hard drive which has a small label about jumper setting. Please check the label how to set to Master and Slave.

After it is done, take a look on IDE cable which connects primary hard drive with motherboard, usually IDE cable’s color is grey and has unused second connector. If you set your new IDE hard drive as Slave, connect the second connector to it. In other case if you put the new IDE drive in as Master, you need to detach IDE cable running on your old hard drive and connect it to the new drive.

In both cases whether as Slave or Master, power cable is needed to connect on the back of new IDE hard drive to supply power. Therefore, your CPU must have at least one unused power cable.

ide hard drive jumper setting

Make sure the new IDE drive is fastened tightly on both sides of its slot. This is very important, because not well fastened hard drive can lead to files corruption.

Please check out my other guides on: disk recovery guide and Xbox hard drive

By Andreas Lee

internal drives

Many parts compose a computer. One of the parts is the heart of computer, internal hard drive. All commands come from it to let computer knows what the user exactly wants to do.

All of information, even the most detailed can be remembered by internal drives. It knows exactly when you write and save a document, when you use certain applications and read email. A computer needs a mediator to convey information from internal hard drive to user, it is known as Operating System which is the main program that sends and receives commands between user and internal hard drive.

Through moving platters, internal drives encode digital information by using read/write head. Each platter stores information in the different parts. By detecting magnetization of platters’ material, the read/write head search for files that you are looking for.

You really give your internal drives hard task if you play games, watch high definition videos, use graphic and multimedia programs, etc. Those kind of applications require a real operation and that will make internal drives prone to physical issues.

In some cases like this, hard drive recovery is required since backup software can not help you to solve this problem, and hard drive recovery service which is the only way out charges you with very expensive fee, so do not give your internal drives more pressure by using many programs that require a lot of memory usage.

Internal drives are getting larger in terms of capacity, rotation speed, cache size, and transfer rate but getting smaller in their size. Those specifications make them able to receive more pressure from memory-hunger applications. These internal drives abilities reduce fault-tolerance level so take a closer look on specifications when you choose to buy an internal hard drive, make sure its specifications match your needs.

Other unexpected causes can bring serious trouble to your internal hard drive such as short circuit, physical shocks or even poor manufacturing. Therefore, make sure you buy a guaranteed product.

Also, take a look on my other helpful articles in: camcorder with hard drive and HDD laptop

By Andreas Lee

internal hard drives

Internal hard drives are the most essential installed hardware in every computer, it has both specification and physical size which are constantly updated.

Internal hard drives have mechanical components like spindle and magnetized platters that are connected each other to read and write information which users are looking for. The spindle spins the platters in a constant speed known as rotation per minute (RPM). Internal hard drives have various rotation speeds. The fastest the RPM, the fastest the data access.

Via cable system or wireless, the digital data can be transferred to an internal hard drive controller. And through the controller, the digital data is made available to the computer’s components.

Every internal hard drive kept data in sectors and tracks, and then hard drive controller will look for certain data if you want to access it. That access speed depends on seek time which is a measurement of how fast the hard drive controller finds accessed data in its track. Fast seek time is much needed since computer’s users always access certain data in whole activity while using computer.

How much unused capacity in internal hard drives and how well the data is organized inside them also affect their performances. You can organize data through defragmentation and any internal hard drives can do this.

Internal hard drives are needed by every computer, even a powerful server system needs them. The technology that is offered by manufacturer ensures that every hard drive has its speciality in terms of storage ability, durability, reliability, and performances.

You can install additional internal hard drives in one Central Processing Unit (CPU) which has more than one hard drive slot and cabling.

Please also check out my other articles on: video recorder, firewire hard drive, and hard disk drives

300 GB

By Andreas Lee

samsung hard drive

Samsung hard drive is a good option for a hard drive. Based on my observation, most internal hard drive’s users prefer to buy Samsung drive as the third option after Western Digital and Seagate drive. This time, I’ll review a little about Samsung hard drive.

Samsung released a powerful standard internal hard drive for computing environment these days. The product’s name is SpinPoint T133 HD300LD. As internal data storage, this Samsung hard drive delivers fast performance for any demanding PC application, and for any type of data like mp3, video, or multimedia. It suits for any CPU.

Pros

The access data speed of this 3.5 inch Samsung hard drive is as fast as Western Digital Caviar WD5000AAKS, delivers high speed spindle speed 7200 RPM which is very fast for a 300 GB internal hard disk drive.

Cons

SpinPoint HD300LD can only be used on PC and it is not possible to use on Mac, very sorry for Mac’s users. The weakness of this Samsung hard drive’ specification is 8 MB buffer size. I don’t say that 8 MB cache is not fast, but WD Caviar is just better in this case.

Specs

• Capacity : 300 GB
• Spindle speed : 7200 RPM
• Buffer cache : 8 MB
• Burst transfer rate : 100 MBps
• Interfaced : ATA-100
• Hardware platform : Windows PC
• Model : HD300LD

You can find the cheaper price of Samsung SpinPoint T133 HD300LD only on Amazon.

Please take a look on my other product reviews in: Seagate drives, Maxtor hard drives, and Western Digital Caviar.

By Andreas Lee

hdd laptop

Your activity to use laptop every day for work purpose might makes you forget that your laptop also need special attention from you. This is very important. Why? Because if there is a problem occurs with your laptop, for example HDD laptop (also known as laptop hard drive), your data or your valuable asset is threatened gone. So now you better start to take care of your laptop especially its hard drive.

You certainly often delete data without realizing that the deleted data or uninstalled program leaves empty gap. The gap size depends on the deleted data size. If a large data deleted, then it will leave a big gap. It is a must to know that more gaps in HDD laptop will result in decreased performance.

Therefore you need to defrag your HDD laptop, below is the step by step:

• Enter ‘My Computer’
• Right click on hard drive which you want to defrag
• Select ‘properties’
• Select ‘Tools’ tab
• Press ‘Defragment Now’ button
• On Disk Defragmenter window, press ‘defragment’ button

Defragmentation requires 15% free disk space for optimal result. If you never defrag your HDD laptop for a long time, the process could take a whole day. But if you do this once a month routinely, the process just takes around 15-30 minutes. It is better to make it done during your spare time.

Make sure when the defragmentation process takes place, do not use any software, downloading, storing, or deleting data.

Avoid storing data in hard drive excessively, meaning is do not store data until your hard drive capacity is completely full. Believe me, I have experience, all of my data is gone and hard drive performance is good-for-naught anymore.

HDD Laptop Buying Tips

Give your attention to laptop hard drive performance before spending your money. I recommend to purchase a Serial ATA (SATA) drives because its performance is needed by most laptop users in this world today. Choose HDD laptop which has 7200 rpm spindle speed because it saves more laptop battery than 5400 rpm and 4500 rpm, reduces your waiting time, and allows fast data access.

Other Specification which is also important to deal is the ‘capacity’. Buying a large capacity HDD laptop is a good choice to prevent your headache due to capacity problem in the future.

Please check out my other guides on: hard disk external and LaCie flash drive

By Andreas Lee

Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (Serial ATA) is also known as SATA Hard Drives, which dominate hard drives market these days. Comes with better performance than the Parallel ATA (PATA) Drives and far away in front of its ancestor Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE Drives) in terms of specification.

SATA Drives first model (SATA1) has a better performance than PATA series, whether from its RPM or its transfer speed, smaller cable size than IDE cable, and a small cable slot that allows simplified installation.

IDE and SATA cable comparison

sata and ide cables

Western Digital Caviar Black SATA Hard Drives

sata hard drives

SATA1 successor is SATA2 which its specification certainly better than the previous, two times faster transfer speed, and some have pretty large buffer cache. One of them is Western Digital Caviar Black 500 GB, can be found with relatively cheap price. SATA Hard Drives provide the best hard drives performance as you want, it is convenient in playing high resolution games, photo editing, video watching, or using multimedia software.

Specs

• Capacity : 500 GB
• Buffer cache size : 32 MB
• Disk rotation speed : 7200 rpm
• Interface: SATA 3 Gb/s
• Model : WD5001AALS
• Warranty : 5 years warranty

How To Handle Damaged SATA Hard Drives

Based on computer users observation, damage on SATA Hard Drives can be due to a fast transfer speed, indicated by a buzz noise. Recommended to backup your data as soon as possible, make it fast. This is important: do not use any software, downloading, or doing anything, just save your data (make the priority for important data), and after that check where the damaged location is. You can try to re-install Operating System, checking the bad sector by using the Error-Checking on the hard drive properties, or Scandisk Utility will automatically be used when the computer suddenly restarted.

Note: Try to use Data Recovery Software to restore lost data after the problem solved due to the crash occurred on your SATA Hard Drives.

In this case, don’t bother to check SATA Hard Drives cable because the problem is not on the cable even if the BIOS do not recognize the hard drive. Using the hard drive expert service is a best decision if you find a dead-end.

Also, take a look on my other helpful articles in: firewire hard disk and external micro drive

By Andreas Lee

laptop hard drive

When purchasing a laptop, you should consider laptop hard drives type rather than just pay attention on laptop specs. Have you ever felt while using the laptop, your laptop battery ran out of power very quickly especially when using lots of software or playing game for a long time, although you have selected a laptop which has long time use battery. Maybe when you bought the laptop, you didn’t pay attention on laptop hard drives type, SATA (ATA) drive or IDE drive.

Laptop hard drives SATA save your laptop battery power more, even if revolutions per minute (rpm) and the buffer cache size on some SATA drives are the same as the IDE drives specs. Based on my observations, even though laptop hard drives SATA have the same specifications with IDE drive but the performance of SATA drive is still faster.

Here I describe the specification which must be considered when choosing laptop hard drives:

Capacity

The data storage capacity in laptop hard drives. The larger the data storage capacity, the better the specification. I recommend choosing the large capacity laptop hard drives, since it can be data backup storage, and for the future in case you need more data storage.

Revolutions per second (RPM, r/m)

The number of disk component rotation in 1 minute. The greater the capacity, the greater the rpm. It’s better to choose 7200 rpm laptop hard drives for best performance.

Buffer cache size

Buffer cache is a temporary storage for files that have been used or read. The larger buffer cache size, the greater storage capacity, and the faster accessing back previously used files. Therefore choose the best buffer cache size if you want a laptop hard drives with the best specs.

If you already have a laptop and want to replace your laptop hard drive with a new one, make sure it is compatible with your laptop motherboard. I always remind you about this, because if you’ve already bought a laptop hard drive, usually you can not change with another hard drive if your laptop motherboard is not compatible.

Please check also my other guides on: 120GB hard disk drive, HDD, and hard drive camcorder.

By Andreas Lee

Advanced Technology Attachment (ATA) is a new generation hard drive technology after Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE). The hard drive which was improved by ATA technology also known as ATA drive.

No need specific controller to support the drive so any computers can use ATA hard drive since this type of hard drive has drive controller attached within it, but ATA connection must be supported with your computer’s motherboard.

Important to know that there are six types of ATA, namely Ultra ATA (has 33 Mbps maximum transfer rate), ATA/66 (has 66 Mbps transfer rate), ATA/100 (has 100 Mbps transfer rate), ATA-1, ATA-2 which also known as fast ATA, and ATA-3.

IDE drive technology is still used on ATA drive. That’s why some ATA hard drives in the market are labeled as IDE/ATA drives.

ATA hard drive installation

Have you ever played Lego? Installing an ATA hard drive is easier than playing Lego. Just take out the right side of hard drive case and you will see data cable and power cable as seen in the picture below.

ata hard drive

Then, stick the ATA hard drive at the drive base empty slot at the lower place of the CPU, make sure that the drive position is correct (the connector side position is on the back). Put the screws by using screwdriver into two screw holes to tighten the drive. Finally, stick data cable and power cable in ATA hard drive connector, close the CPU case, and it is done.

Tips: You can leave the CPU case open to make it not so easily get heat while using computer.

This video demonstrates how to install an ATA drive.

My Other articles that you might be interested in: 500gb external hard drive and computer hard disk drive.

By Andreas Lee

2.5 notebook hard drive

For you who want to buy additional storage for your notebook, SimpleTech STD-8000HD/60H notebook hard drive can be your alternative choice. It provides not so much Gigabyte but here is its speciality located. This SimpleTech product is the right choice for you who only want small capacity notebook hard drive with maximal speed access.

Hard drive capacity affects the performance of the hard drive itself. For example if a hard drive has good specifications but lots of data stored in it, the performance will be decreased. SimpleTech STD-8000HD/60H only has 60 GB capacity which is classified as a little bit low in this era but its spindle speed is as quickly as 500 GB external hard drive, so it will give you the maximum and the real performance.

Pros

This notebook hard drive 7200 RPM ability allows you to access plenty of data at the same time within short period and it never lets you waited. No need technical knowledge to install this notebook ATA hard drive, simply slide out your current hard drive, DVD drive, floppy drive, etc. and slide in this new hard drive.

Cons

SimpleTech STD-8000HD/60H notebook hard drive is only designed for DELL 8000, and only supported by Windows OS.

The package includes StorageSoft EZ Drive software as driver to recognize this notebook hard drive.

Specs

• Capacity : 60 GB
• Interface type : ATA-100
• Spindle speed : 7200 RPM
• Hardware platform : PC
• Hardware description : Internal hard drive
• Warranty : 3 years warranty
• Model : STD-8000HD/60H

It also has highest quality assurance ISO9001 Certified.

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