Correct choice of hard drive size. How to find out the real size of the hard drive

Instruction

Information about the amount of hard disk is available in the BIOS, and you can get it even if there is no installed operating system and the inability to open the case of the system unit. Power on the computer and press the DEL key (less commonly, these are the F1, F2, F10 keys). The main is displayed BIOS menu Setup. Depending on the BIOS version, the name of the option that determines the parameters of the drive varies. Its name may be IDE HDD Auto-Detection, IDE configuration. Select the disk of interest in the list of all installed media and click the Enter key. A window will open with HDD specifications, where the size is indicated disk. For size conversion disk to gigabytes, divide the number of megabytes by 1024.

operating room Windows systems get stats disk You can use the Computer Management console. Right-click on "My Computer" and select "Manage". In the left window, go to the Manage disk mi". Launch the Properties command by clicking right click mouse on graphics view disk labeled "Disk 0", "Disk 1", etc., depending on which drives you have installed. In the Properties dialog box, click the Volumes tab. Size will be shown here disk and the size of the volumes it contains.

Can be used to determine volume disk third party utilities. One such utility is HDD Life Pro. It's easy to find on the Internet. The shareware program is quite enough to determine the size of your hard disk. Download the program, install it on your computer and run it for execution. The window that opens will display detailed information about all parameters disk, including its volume, which will be indicated under the name disk at the top of the window.

Volume or capacity is one of the characteristics of a substance or body in space. The units of volume are cubic centimeters, cubic meters or liters, in the English system of units, volume is also measured in gallons and barrels. The method of measuring volume depends on the shape of the object and its linear dimensions.

Instruction

The volume of geometric bodies is measured in cubic meters or cubic centimeters. The method of calculation in this case depends on the shape of the body.

For simple geometric bodies, there are corresponding formulas, for example, the volume of a sphere of radius R is calculated by the formula

V = (4/3) * π * R³, where R is the radius, π is the number π

The volume of a cone with a given base radius and height has the formula

V = (1/3) * π * R² * h, where R is the radius, h is the height of the cone, π is the number π

The volume of an arbitrary body can be calculated using integral calculus.

If a body of revolution is given given by the function y \u003d f (x), then its volume can be determined by the formula shown in the figure.

For a cylindrical body with base R, which is bounded from above by a surface z = f(x, y), the volume is calculated using a double integral.

. How much do you need?

For office PCs 120-200 GB will be enough.

For multimedia computers you already need at least 500 GB, unless of course you are going to fill it with high-resolution video files.

One movie, depending on the resolution (720p or 1080i), takes from 4 to 10 GB on the hard drive;

A Blu-Ray movie takes up to 25 GB of space;

Season 1 of the popular series, depending on the quality, will take from 6 to 120 GB on your disk. And we are talking about one season and all seasons can weigh quite a lot;

Music is a little easier. One album in lossless format (FLAC, Ape) rarely weighs more than 600 MB, however, the full discography of one group can take even 20 GB, but this is rather an exception, basically a discography of 12 albums takes 5 GB.

For gaming computers the volume must be at least 400 GB. Of course, nothing prevents you from choosing HDD more, but you should not turn the hard drive into a repository of images and installed games that you don’t play.

It should be borne in mind that modern games already require up to 20 GB of free disk space for installation.

Personally for myself, I see no reason to buy too voluminous hard drives. Yes, the quality of digital content is growing quite fast, and with it the size of this content is growing. But along with this, the speed of access to the Internet also increases. And options are already being created when all content will be stored on special Internet servers, and the user will be able to view them without downloading. And for this you will need special systems in which the hard drive will be replaced with a more productive flash memory.

Comparative table of technology development

	IBM RAMAC	Maxtor 7040A	WD 20EARS
Year of issue	1956	1991	2010
Volume	5 MB	40 MB	2 TB
Number of plates	50	3	4
Insert diameter	24 inches	3.5 inches	3.5 inches
Recording Density	2 kbps 2	10 Mbps 2	347 Gbps 2
Rotational speed	1200 rpm	3500 rpm	7200 rpm
Average access time	1 s	30ms	5.6ms
Maximum interface speed	9 kb/s	800 kb/s	300 MB/s
unit cost	$10,000/MB	$6/MB	$0.08/GB

It has a lot of some features that will be very useful for novice users to learn about. Yes, and advanced will not hurt. Now we will dwell in more detail on such a parameter as HDD capacity. Any PC user should know this. A little lower we will analyze what the maximum, declared and real capacity HDD. And we will also describe the reasons why the size of the hard drive may decrease. Also, SSDs are now gaining popularity - solid state drives of information in which there are no moving parts, as in the usual "hard drives". But so far, the price for them is quite high, although there is a tendency to fall.

Maximum capacity of modern HDDs

Once upon a time, users were happy with "hard drives" with a capacity of 40 GB, but these times have already sunk into oblivion. The volume of modern HDDs is now measured in terabytes. One terabyte is approximately 1000 gigabytes. Agree, this is a lot. But this is only at first glance. Gradually, the HDD is "clogged" with movies and music, and there is a catastrophic lack of space. If you decide to build a new PC, you should pay close attention to the amount of HDD. Just in this case - "more - means better." Nowadays, the maximum capacity of an HDD available for purchase is 8 TB. With this parameter, you can safely download anything. And a couple of such “hard drives” in a PC will allow you to forget about problems with free space for a long time. Of course, the price of these monsters differs markedly from the cost of budget "two-terabyte" devices (of which there are many more).

Some problems with older PCs

It will be useful for owners of older PCs to know that if they want to replace their old “hard drive” with something larger, then some problems may arise. The fact is that some old motherboards categorically refuse to support HDDs larger than 138 GB. This is due to the error of the popular for such BIOS boards award. In such a situation, you can try Award long ago released a patch for this bug. In any case, the ATA interface will not be able to support a large capacity HDD (terabyte and above). Here you will need to replace the entire motherboard. And if you need to change the "motherboard", then you will have to update all other PC components, including the case and power supply. So it's easier to buy a new "system unit" right away.

HDD for laptops

With laptops, the situation is not as rosy as with PCs. Of course, you can install a larger hard drive on a laptop. But you will not notice a special increase in free space. The fact is that at this stage the maximum capacity is only 2 TB. Laptop motherboards simply do not support the capacities that are available to PC users with full-size motherboards. Only a purchase can save here external HDD. Of course, it is far from internal. But still, no increase in free space.

Reducing HDD capacity

For some reason, the maximum capacity hard disk space may shrink over time. This is mainly due to external factors. Proponents of the popular myth that frequent formatting can reduce disk space are wrong. HDD capacity can only drop from physical impact. These include a blow, a strong shake (only during operation), a power surge from the power supply. Due to the influence of these factors, “broken” clusters appear on the surface of the disk. Of course, in order for the volume loss to be noticeable, you will have to “kill” a considerable number of them. But in this case, the disk will simply stop working. It will be possible to throw it away, since it is absolutely impossible to “revive” such a device.

Claimed and actual HDD capacity

Manufacturers hard drives usually proudly write on their devices the amount of storage space in integers. However, the actual HDD capacity often differs from the declared one. What is it connected with?

Firstly, manufacturers declare the maximum volume "by eye", guided by the fact that in the table of the international measurement system 1 GB is equal to 1 billion bytes. A gigabyte is actually 107 billion. The larger the maximum capacity of the HDD, the more gigs it lacks. For example, if you have a "hard drive" with a declared capacity of 200 GB, then its real capacity will be 186 GB. And nothing can be done about it. The measurement table is certified by GOST.

Secondly, each HDD has a system partition for recording debugging information. It also somewhat limits the maximum capacity of the HDD, although not by much.

Conclusion

In general, the question of the maximum size of a hard drive is quite extensive and one article is not enough here. However, some general aspects have been considered. Now it is much easier to understand what the maximum volume depends on. Also, many were interested in the question of how the actual volume differs from the declared one and for what reasons the HDD capacity may decrease. What are these reasons, we have dismantled. Keep an eye on your HDD and everything will be fine with it until it "dies" its own death.

Why is a hard drive called a hard drive?

Winchesters began to be called hard drives in the United States in the 70s of the twentieth century. Then IBM released the first analogue of modern hard drives: a device consisting of two cabinets, inside of which there were magnetic disks with a capacity of 30 MB each.

It was marked with the inscription "30x30" - exactly the same inscription was present on the rifle of the well-known Winchester company. At first, hard drives were called "hard drives" as a joke, but soon the name was firmly entrenched in them and became almost official.

Not everyone knows that a computer has several hard drives. For example, when opening the My Computer program, we see the icons of drives C, D, E, F. But this does not mean that you have one hard drive - in most cases it is several logical drives, on which the only physical disk installed on the computer.

But it also happens that a computer has several physical drives installed, if you are not afraid to open your system unit and find them if, again, you know what they look like.

Each of the hard disks can be marked with one Latin letter or, in turn, can be divided into several logical disks. This is convenient, for example, to store separately movies, games, documents, photos. And also in case of disk defragmentation by programs, which will take less time.

So how do you determine the number of hard drives on a computer without opening it?

Everything is very simple. Click "Start" and right-click on "Computer". You can also click on the My Computer icon on the desktop, unless that icon is without an arrow at the bottom, i.e. it is not a shortcut. In the context menu that appears, select "Manage".

The following window will open:

Here you need to select the "Disk Management" section. The display will show information about the physical drives and the logical volumes on which they are marked. The following illustration shows an example of one hard drive partitioned into two logical drives. There are also two hidden sections intended for the system needs of the computer - they do not interest us.

And here we see two hard drives- Disk0 and Disk1:

Disk 0 is divided into logical - C,D,E,F. We don't see all the letters here. If you have Windows installed on Disk0, then even after removing Disk1, the operating system will boot quietly.

Disk 1 is solid and not divided into logical partitions, marked with the letter G.

How to find out the real size of the hard drive

For a better understanding, manufacturers and sellers indicate the traditional volume of disks: 40, 60, 120, 160, 320, 500, 640 GB, and so on. However, in reality, it is always less than stated, because:
1 GB = 1024 MB
1 MB = 1024 KB
1 KB = 1024 bytes

AndSo, we see that the logical drive C has a capacity of 400.76 GB, and the physical drive G has 931.51 GB. The total capacity of drive C can be found by adding up the volumes of its logical drives.

First of all, you need to learn that there are 2 types of “screws” (hard drives) for desktop computers, mainly differing in the type of connection:

IDE(aka ATA, he is PATA ) — obsolete, but still used type of hard drives. Visually, it can be distinguished by a wide cable slot (40 pins in 2 rows) at the end of the HDD (hard disk) itself and four thick contacts on the right for connecting the power cable. You can read more about the ATA standard on Wikipedia.

SATA(SATA2) - next, more advanced level in the development of the previous standard. It differs by much better indicators in terms of data exchange speed. And this means recording, copying, deleting your favorite movies, music, movies, the computer will be faster.

The main characteristics of the hard drive: interface, capacity, buffer size, physical size (form factor), random access time, data transfer rate, IOPS, spindle speed, noise level.

The first thing to pay attention to when choosing hard disk - interface- a device that converts and transmits signals between the HDD and the computer. The most common interfaces now are: SCSI, SAS, ATA (IDE, PATA), Serial ATA (SATA), eSATA and USB.

The SCSI interface has a speed of 640MB / s, it is used mainly on servers; SAS is its higher speed counterpart (12 Gb/s) and is backwards compatible with the interface SATA.

ATA (IDE, PATA) - predecessor SATA, now it is no longer relevant due to its low speed of 150MB / s.

eSATA and USB - interfaces for external hard drives.

Serial ATA (SATA)- This is the most common hard drive interface. It is on him that you should be guided when choosing a hard drive. There are currently several variations SATA. From a physical point of view, they do not differ (the interfaces are compatible), the differences are only in speed: (SATA-I - 150 MB / s, SATA-II - 300 MB / s, SATA-III - 600 MB / s.).

As for the capacity: everything is simple. The larger it is, the better, as more information can be recorded. This characteristic does not affect the performance of the hard drive. Defined by the user based on the need for storage space for files. The table below shows the average sizes of the main file types that you should pay attention to when choosing HDD.

Name	Unit Volume	Name	Unit Volume
OS Windows	up to 20 GB	Movie HD	5 - 50 GB
Linux OS	up to 20 GB	Music files	3-10 Mb
MacOS	up to 20 GB	Images	1-20 Mb
Virtual machine	from 10 GB	Modern games	10 - 20 GB
Movie DVD	1 - 5 GB	Programs and utilities	10Mb - 5 Gb

Buffer size (cache). Buffer (cache) - volatile memory built into the hard disk (similar to random access memory), designed to smooth out differences in read / write speed, as well as store data that is accessed most often. The more cache, the better. The indicator varies from 8 to 64 MB. The most optimal value is 32 MB.

There are two main form factor for hard drives: 3.5 inches and 2.5 inches. The first is mainly used in desktop computers, the second - in laptops.

Random access time. This characteristic shows the average time during which the hard drive performs the operation of positioning the read / write head on an arbitrary section of the magnetic disk. The parameter ranges from 2.5 to 16 milliseconds. Naturally, the lower the value, the better.

Transfer rate. Modern hard drives have a speed of 50-75 Mb / s (for the inner zone of the HDD) and 65-115 Mb / s (for the outer zone).

The number of I/O operations per second. This characteristic ranges from 50 to 100 operations per second, depending on the placement of information on the disk.

The last three parameters should be considered in a hierarchical sequence, depending on the purpose of the hard drive. If you often use bulky applications, games, often watch movies in HD quality, they should be selected in the following sequence: data transfer rate > number of I / O operations per second > random access time. If you have a lot of small, frequently launched applications in your arsenal, then the hierarchy will look like this: random access time > number of IOPS > data transfer rate.

Spindle speed is the number of spindle revolutions per minute. Access time and average data transfer rate largely depend on this parameter. The most common are rotation speeds: 5400, 5900, 7200, 10000 and 15000 rpm. The optimal speed for a PC is 7200 rpm.

Noise level hard drive consists of spindle noise and positioning noise. Measured in decibels. This characteristic should be paid attention from the convictions of comfort.

Hard disk manufacturer.

At the moment, the main manufacturers of hard drives are - western digital, Hitachi, Samsung, Seagate Technology, Toshiba. You can argue to the point :) to argue which company is better ... But let's get to the facts.. Let's type in a smart search engine Nigma.ru "a problem with hard drive....." (instead of dots - we write the company):

hard drive problemHitachi- requests 5 400 000.

hard drive problem Seagate- requests 5 500 000.

hard drive problemWestern Digital- requests 7 400 000 .

hard drive problemsamsung- requests 17 000 000.

As you can see, the first place in terms of reliability is Hitachi, the second Seagate. Although I would, based on my own experience, put in second placeWestern Digital (WD).

WD come with stickers in different colors - Black(black), Blue(blue), Green(green). The most reliable is Black, In second place Blue and on the last Green.

So, when choosing a hard drive:

1. Important! You need to find out - what connector on your old hard drive. If IDE, then I advise you to look at the connectors on the motherboard. In the presence of SATA-connections, better to buy SATA hard drive. Without sata, buy IDE.

2. Important! Find out if your old PSU will pull, typically 300 watts - a new one (perhaps more voluminous and speedy) HDD.

For normal operation of disks, they must be periodically, once a month, defragmented.

So what is fragmentation...
During operation, files written to the drive are often not located in consecutive clusters, but are spread into several pieces in different parts of the plate. This also happens when the file size increases during the operation of the computer and when large files are written to a full hard drive, when it simply does not have a sufficient number of consecutive free clusters. The more often files are modified, the more their fragmentation grows (i.e., the file is split into more “pieces”). This leads to the fact that reading the file will take all more time, because the hard disk will have to intensively move its heads, collecting scattered pieces of the file over the entire area of \u200b\u200bthe plates. The more fragments in the file, the slower our computer works. Probably, each of us at least once got angry at how slowly a game level loads or a “heavy” application like Adobe Photoshop starts.
So, file fragmentation is evil. And evil must be fought mercilessly, moreover, it is better on its territory. :)

The main weapon in the fight against file fragmentation are defragmenter programs. There are quite a few of them, but the essence of their work is one. During the analysis of the hard disk, a map of the distribution of files by clusters is created, after which the fragmented files are moved to free space so that the entire file ends up in successive clusters. Consider a defrag program.

Defraggler 1.01

Developer: Piriform Ltd

Distribution size: 445 KB

Work under control: Windows 2K/XP/2003/Vista

Distribution method: freeware (http://www.defraggler.com/download)

Price: is free

Defraggler is a very simple and easy to use defragmentation tool that is fast and free. The program is extremely easy to manage, does not require any settings and is very compact - to run it you need only one file that can be copied to a flash drive and later used on any computer without installation. The principle of operation of the Defraggler is somewhat different from similar solutions.

First, the program analyzes the specified disk and issues full list having fragmented files, and indicating the full path to each of them. And then, also at the request of the user, it can defragment selected folders and files, or immediately the entire disk as a whole. During defragmentation, the program processes even very large files, but skips system-locked files and the MFT area.

Which hard drive to choose. The hard drive must also be chosen correctly so that it is fast, quiet and reliable. Unfortunately, before you have time to look back, the disk is already filled to capacity. There are users who, even after several years, still have enough disk space to work for another 10 years.

But this is usually the exception. Many people have a catastrophic lack of hard disk space, and sometimes just somewhere. Now a computer is not just a typewriter. Many users are engaged in serious projects on it and earn good money on it. And the hard drive, as you know, stores a lot of useful information, so you don’t need to buy it anyhow.

Which hard drive to choose

It all depends on what you will be doing on your computer. It is best if your computer has not one hard drive, but two or even three. How to install such a disk, read. On the main disk you will have an operating system, and on the rest it is better to store your data.

Usually there is not enough space on the hard drive. Don't think you are the only one. Now I even wonder how I once had enough 10 GB. The most annoying thing is that all the files are needed and expensive, and you don’t want to delete anything at all.

Any device has its own parameters and resources, and a computer hard drive is no exception. If you just come to the store and ask for a disc, then you may be advised not at all what you need, but most likely what is more expensive. Why overpay if you can take the same or for the remaining money.

WHERE ELSE CAN YOU STORE YOUR DATA OTHER THAN YOUR HARD DISK

Previously, you could burn your data to a "blank" (CD or DVD) and sleep peacefully. Now everyone has so much information on their computers that it is no longer possible to copy everything to a CD. At best, you can rewrite something of the most important.

Still, it's not very convenient. You wouldn't be carrying around a briefcase full of CDs or DVDs and sticking one after the other into the drive to find the information you need.

You can buy small in size, but large in volume external drive and carry it with you. But, again, there is no guarantee that it will not “glitch” someday. And then "goodbye" valuable information. It happened to me recently. But, now is not about that.

External hard drive 2.5'

Hard disk capacity (capacity)

Under the operating system, a large amount of disk space is not needed. Since the minimum disk size of 500 GB is currently on sale, this will be enough for your eyes. But another disk, if you constantly download something from the Internet, you need to take as much volume as possible.

Spindle speed

Under the operating system you need a disk with a good spindle speed. At a low speed, your operating system will slow down, no matter what the memory is, and no matter how fast the microprocessor is.

Everything should be in the complex. Otherwise, you are throwing "money down the drain." You can't save on a hard drive!

Modern hard drives (HDD) 2.5 and 3.5 "have a spindle speed of 5400 or 7200 rpm. The higher the spindle speed, the higher the speed of the disc.

For home computer hard speed drive on which the operating system will be installed, graphic programs and your games, must be at least 7200 rpm.

If you are buying a drive for the office, then 5400 rpm will suffice. The same speed is suitable for data storage, i.e. a second hard drive, especially since it's cheaper.

There are drives with a SAS or SCSI interface, with a speed of 10,000 and 15,000 rpm, but they are used for servers, and they are not cheap.

SCSI hard drive

But if you have an old computer and a hard IDE drive, then the choice is not large, and you can forget about the good speed of the disk spindle. Yes, and finding such a disk is already problematic.

How to determine if a hard drive is old or not

If your drive has a wide cable, then this is an IDE interface. They are no longer used in new computers, and the speed of these drives is low.

Cable for connecting an IDE drive

New computers come with hard drives SATA interface, SATA 2 and SATA 3.

SATA Drive Cable

The data transfer rate of SATA drive is 50% faster than that of IDE drive.

SATA, SATA 2 and SATA 3 drives are interchangeable. But the data transfer rate of SATA 3 is much better than that of SATA.

Please note that the cable for SATA and SATA2 drive is not suitable for SATA3 drive. They have frequency characteristics different, although the connectors are the same and they will still work. The cable for SATA3 is thicker and usually black.

It is also important to know what hard type SATA drive supported by your motherboard otherwise the drive will not operate at full capacity. But this is not critical. But if the motherboard is very old, then SATA drive it may not support at all, i.e. it will not have a connector for it.

Buffer size or cache size

The next item to select a drive is cache memory size(buffer memory). There is a cache memory of 8, 16, 32, 64 and 128 MB. The higher the number, the better speed data processing.

For data storage, 16 MB is suitable, and for a system it is better to buy from 32 MB. If you are engaged in graphics, then for programs such as Photoshop and AutoCAD it is better to take a hard drive with cache memory - 64 or 128 MB, especially since the difference in price between them is not significant.

Average linear read speed

Linear read speed means the speed of continuous reading of data from the surface of the plates (HDD) and is the main characteristic that reflects the actual speed of the disk. It is measured in megabytes per second (MB/s).

Modern HDD drives with SATA interface have an average linear read speed of 100 to 140 Mb/s.

The speed of linear reading of HDD disks depends on the density of data recording on the magnetic surface of the plates and the quality of the disk mechanics.

Access time

This is the speed with which the disk finds the required file after it is accessed by the operating system or some program. Measured in milliseconds (ms). This setting has a big impact on disk performance when working with small files and not much when working with large ones.

Hard drives have an access time of 12 to 18 ms. A good indicator is the access time of 13-14 ms (depending on the quality (accuracy) of the disk mechanics).

Now there are new hard drives on sale - SSDs consisting of only chips, but they are very expensive and therefore not designed for data storage. They are only good for running programs. SSD drives do not have a spindle, so they are completely silent, do not heat up, and are very fast.

And the most important! Try not to install hard drives right next to each other. Better if around them more space, because during operation, they become very hot and can fail from overheating.

Better yet, especially in summer, cool them down by opening the computer lid and pointing a fan at them. Overheating is just as detrimental to a hard drive as it is to a video card and microprocessor.

Any manufacturer of disks has disks that are more expensive and cheaper. But this does not mean that companies are hacking. Just one product for state employees, and the second for the more affluent. Both those and other disks are made to last, but the parts are made of different materials, which have different wear periods.

Hard drive manufacturers

The main manufacturers of hard disk drives (HDDs) are:

Fujitsu- a Japanese company, previously famous for the high quality of its products, is currently represented by a small number of models and is not very popular.

Hitachi- the Japanese company, both earlier and now, is distinguished by the stable quality of hard drives. By purchasing a Hitachi hard drive, you will not fail, having received good quality at an affordable price.

Samsung This is a Korean company. Today Samsung produces the fastest and highest quality HDD drives. The price may be a little higher than the competition, but it's worth it.

Seagate- American company, a pioneer in the field of technology. Now the quality of hard drives from this company, unfortunately, leaves much to be desired.

Toshiba is a Japanese company. Now represented by a small number of models in our market. As a result, there may be problems in after-sales service such manufacturers.

Western Digital (WD) is an American company that specializes in the production of hard drives. Recently, the disks of this company do not stand out for outstanding characteristics, and are very noisy.

It is better to choose between Samsung or Hitachi, as the highest quality, fastest and most stable.

So, the main characteristics of hard drives:

Spindle speed
HDD capacity
Cache size
Average linear read speed
Noise level
Manufacturer

Now you know which hard drive to choose. Unfortunately, there is not always a choice in stores, so I prefer to order online. There are more choices in big cities. Therefore, do not be lazy and study their main characteristics.

Computer tips for novice users