To choose the right HDD, it is necessary to initially determine the purpose of its application. Firstly, the choice may be related to installation on a hard drive operating system. Secondly, a hard drive can be used to store data, i.e. music, videos, photos, etc.

In addition, it must be borne in mind that for the desktop computer system disks of such a form factor as 3.5 inches are intended, and for laptops - models of 2.5 inches. You also need to decide on the desired capacity. If you plan to use only one hard drive, then it is advisable to purchase it with the maximum possible volume.

Hard disk platters

To date, hard drives have in their composition from 1 to 4 plates. In this case, the correct choice corresponds to the option where there is one plate. This is due to the fact that:

• one plate allows for faster reading of information. In addition, the performance of the OS depends on the positioning of the heads, so in this case it will be higher;
• a single platter means fewer mechanical parts. Based on this, the risk of breakdowns is reduced and the noise level is significantly reduced;
• less heat dissipation will extend the life of the drive in question.

HDD spindle speed

Typically, spindle rotation is determined by indicators such as 5400 and 7200 rpm. Higher revolutions are usually noted in those hard drives, which are part of the servers. There are also models where revolutions per minute can be determined by any value from 5400 to 7200.

In turn, a high rotational speed can significantly speed up the processing of such parameters as reading and writing information. At the same time, discs with a lower rotation speed are characterized by a quieter operation mode. If it is planned to install an operating system on the HDD, then it is worth choosing those options that are characterized by an indicator of 7200 rpm. Otherwise, a speed mode of 5400 rpm is quite suitable.

Thanks to the constant improvement of technology, the unit cost of solid-state drives is steadily declining, while their volume and resource, on the contrary, are growing. In spite of this, hard drives will be relevant for quite a long time and manufacturers do not stop in an effort to improve their performance.

Actually, the design of the HDD has not fundamentally changed for a long time - inside the sealed case, from one to four light round plates rotate, and several magnetic heads move above them and write / read information. The efforts of manufacturing companies are aimed at modernizing the attachment points of moving elements, selecting the composition of the ferromagnetic layer on the disks, improving the parameters of the drive and heads, as well as optimizing the algorithms for managing this entire economy.

The most important selection criteria

Geometric dimensions

The term “form factor” is more commonly used, but there is one caveat. There are two main HDD sizes: 3.5 inches for desktops and 2.5 inches for laptops. As a rule, the thickness of the drive depends on the number of platters, and if its value does not matter much for desktop PCs, then portable devices it can play a decisive role. Ultra-thin laptops are designed to install 7 or even 5 mm hard drives, while the most widely used devices are 9.5 mm thick.

Purpose of the hard drive

Perhaps the most important criterion is the appointment hard drive. If its main task is to storage of various information- the requirements for the amount of disk space and unit cost come to the fore. Currently the best choice here are drives with a capacity of 2-4 TB with low energy consumption. At the same time, special attention is not paid to the speed of rotation of the plates. For a HDD of this category, it is usually 5400 rpm, but it can be higher. For responsible data storage drives are organized into RAID arrays, and reliability is added to the requirements, expressed in terms of device time between failures. hard drives for corporate sector have an expanded set of design features that increase the "survivability" of the HDD and the corresponding cost. NAS drives are required to be instantly ready for exchange at any time, so the firmware for their controllers is modified accordingly, usually at the expense of energy efficiency.

System drives should provide maximum read and, to a lesser extent, write speed. Their distinguishing feature is a higher plate speed (7200 rpm and more), and a side effect of intensive engine operation is increased heat and noise. Of course, you need to focus on drives with the most productive interface that the motherboard supports (currently SATA III). In operating rooms Windows systems XP and Windows 7 had problems with large boot partitions, therefore, as system drives, 3 GB and above were used with this factor in mind. A kind of compromise between the affordable cost of HDDs and the high performance of SSDs are hybrid devices. In single-disk workstations or laptops, such drives can significantly increase the speed of loading the operating system.

Volume

When choosing a hard disk Special attention always refer to its volume. It is its lack in most cases that is the driving reason for the purchase. From the point of view of the cost of a unit of information storage, the most profitable HDD with a capacity of 2 or 4 TB for desktop systems and terabyte for mobile devices. Preference should be given to discs with fewer platters. Having a higher recording density, such media also provide a higher exchange rate, and the device itself heats up less during operation.

Photo: domcomputer.ru

Other characteristics

• Up to date interfaces are SATA III for consumer applications and SAS for servers. Rigid ones are also on sale. SATA drives II. While remaining fully compatible in terms of connectivity, they have half the bandwidth of the interfaces of the third revision of this standard. Legacy hardware may require parallel bus (PATA - aka IDE) drives.
• The higher read/write speed, the faster the data will be exchanged with the disk. It should only be borne in mind that manufacturers like to indicate in the characteristics the maximum values ​​\u200b\u200breached ideally. In fact, the speed decreases as the heads get closer to the center of the platter and depends on the size of the data block and a host of other things. For example, in real conditions, the exchange almost always goes both ways. Typical maximum values ​​for drives with SATA interface III are in the range from 130 to 180 Mb/s.
• Plate rotation speed is important if maximum performance is required, even at the expense of other parameters. For drives oriented to other tasks, its value may be variable or not indicated by manufacturers.
• To a certain extent, speed up the performance of the hard drive allows you to cache memory. During the reading process, data from adjacent blocks is also retrieved and placed in a special buffer in the expectation that they will be required the next time the drive is accessed. When reading a large array, this always has a positive effect. The larger the cache, the more noticeable the performance increase - this was one of the reasons for the creation of hybrid devices. The flip side of the coin is the increased cost and complexity of read/write coordination.
• Power consumption indirectly characterizes the probable heating of the HDD. High-speed drives are expected to be more voracious and more heated, while economical and relatively cool ones are their slow counterparts. In read / write modes, the former consume power from 8 to 12 W, the latter require 4-5. 2.5" hard drives are much more modest in their appetites, 2-3 W are enough for them. Of particular interest is the amount of consumption at rest, which serves as a clear indicator of the device's energy efficiency.

Main manufacturers

Hard drives are quite a high-tech product, so initially a small number of companies specializing in their release is constantly decreasing. The most demanded hard drives produced Western Digital, Seagate Technology, Hitachi Global Storage technologies (HGST) and, to a lesser extent, Samsung Electronics. In the 2.5-inch HDD segment, products are very popular Toshiba Corporation, and the drives of this company serve as the basis for 2/3 of external hard drives produced under other brands.

Photo: www.komposervis.ru

When purchasing an HDD, first of all, start from how it will be used. The operating system installed on the "green" series drives will boot more slowly than it could. The speed of data exchange with fast drives will please the heart, if you forget about their cost. The loss of information can significantly complicate life, so serious matters should be trusted only to hard drives with increased reliability.

When choosing a hard drive for a laptop, do not forget to pay attention to the size. The thinner mobile device, the more likely it is to install a Thin or Ultrathin drive. On the other hand, the HDD compartment of almost any laptop has one or another shock resistance system, which is based on installing a disk surrounded by damping material. good option here will be the purchase of a hard drive, which includes a special thickening pad.

When planning to buy a hard drive of the required capacity, remember that the value indicated by the manufacturer and real capacity a formatted drive is, as they say in Odessa, two big differences. As a rule, hard drives indicate the capacity in billions (G) or trillions (T) bytes. And since one terabyte consists of 1,099,511,627,776 minimally addressable data sets (1024 to the 4th power), then the volume in the corresponding units is less.

So is the constant.

Naturally, the possibility of saving one or another amount of information depends on the capacity of the drive. In this article, we will talk about a relatively simple and logical, but for many, rather ambiguous characteristics of the capacity (volume) of a hard drive. Namely, how much hard disk space should you choose for your system.

Hard disk capacity is a measure of the maximum amount of information that your hard disk can hold. At the moment, hard drives from 80 GB to 4000 GB (4 TB) are common.

Let's take a look at what is currently the maximum and optimal storage capacity of an average home system among drives available in stores.

If you briefly analyze the drives presented in several online stores computer technology, it is quite clearly seen that the maximum is somewhere around the capacity of 3-4 TB. The cost of such pleasure is on average $300-400. It cannot be said that such voluminous hard drives will appeal to a wide range of users, in view of their not very friendly price. And why does an ordinary user need a 4 TB hard drive? For vacation photos?

In general, we come to the conclusion that such a capacity will be superfluous and is needed only for specific requirements. Still, it cannot be denied that there are lovers of rather strange collecting of films of 10-30 GB. Or those who actually need to store the source, for example, uncompressed video segments after editing. If we take Adobe after effects, then the finished file after rendering A 3-minute video on a standard codec (in AVI format) can take about 50 GB. So for lovers of uncompressed video files, you may even need RAID array from several such hard drives.

Let's return to the analysis of the capacity of drives presented in online stores and see that the most popular class (as you know, demand generates supply) are 500 GB - 1 TB drives.

As for me, for a typical home system, 500 GB is more than enough. This is if you do not have the above described passion for collecting movies on your hard drive. In any case, the complete package installed programs you will take no more than 60 GB. Music will most likely "float" within 10-40 GB. You can also allocate about 50 GB for photos and home video, if you shoot a lot, then you can use 100-150. Also, about 70-90 GB for games (for avid gamers) and residual files of various types. In total, after several years of active use of hard disk resources, you will have only 250 GB occupied, and the remaining 250 will simply be empty. By the way, I recommend using special software for hard drive testing to avoid loss of information. In general, as we can see, for those who are especially economical, the option with hard drive for 250 or 320 GB.

I would like to note that everything here is purely individual, but the above calculations will more than cover the needs of the average user. Before buying, you just need to think about what you will store there, but even if a mistake is made in these approximate calculations, nothing prevents you from buying another hard drive (in the case of a desktop). In the case of a laptop, you can easily use an external drive.

Here are the arguments regarding the capacity of the hard drive. In the end, the final choice of volume, of course, is yours.

This article was an introduction to a series of articles on hard drive characteristics, the rest of which we will cover in detail in subsequent articles.

You can find out the capacity of the hard drive by the sticker on the case. And how to see the volume of the already installed drive? Under Windows 10, the amount of memory can be found through the "Control Panel" - "System and Security" - "Administrative Tools" - "Storage Devices" - "Disk Management". Thanks to the last item, you can see the entire volume of the hard disk, how many drives are connected on the device and what partitions they are divided into.

In the world of computing, HDD size is considered a little different than in mathematics. So, 1 TB is not 1000 GB, but 1024 GB. How to find out the size of a hard drive that says 250 GB? In reality, its capacity is 250000/1024=244, plus a corrective division by a factor of 1.05 to obtain more accurate data. As a result, we have 244 / 1.05 = 232.5 GB - this is the maximum capacity of a disk with an inscription of 250 GB. What is the actual capacity of a 500 GB hard drive? Approximately 465 GB, and the 1.5 TB versions are only 1.395 TB. The top 2 TB models actually have 1860 GB. The marketing ploy of the manufacturers was a success, but users have to pay in reality for a much smaller amount of data. In addition, it is worth considering the layout of the HDD for a specific file system with which the OS works. Although there are small losses, they still amount to tens of megabytes. And it does not matter what type of media is used - HDD or SSD.

Most often information capacity confusing newbies. Programmers are aware of this situation and always buy media with a margin. It should be understood that the capacity of the HDD may vary depending on its condition. For example, workshops sometimes hide partitions with broken sectors of a magnetic disk.

Hard disk memory

To check the hard drive capacity on a laptop, you need to go to "My Computer" or "This Computer" (in various versions of Windows). Sometimes the computer incorrectly determines the size of the hard disk. But you need to know that there is only one reason: either the manufacturer (it happens extremely rarely), or the repair shop reduced the size of the drive to hide non-working areas. So, a worn-out SSD gradually loses its size, and automatically (idle memory cells are simply turned off). In a magnetic HDD, the situation is slightly different - the magnetic properties of the surface are often lost, and individual sectors or clusters are simply not overwritten, causing failures. Typically, a "refurbished" drive can last for many years, but its capacity will be less. The main thing is not to get into the markup and not try to restore the HDD yourself. But there are also cases when a laptop comes across after an amateur who simply incorrectly partitioned the drive, leaving entire arrays of hard drives unclaimed. In this case, it is really possible to increase the maximum amount of available disk space.

HDD Check Methods

The easiest way to increase the size of a hard disk is by deleting hidden partitions or repartitioning logical volumes in a particular file system. For "windows" this is NTFS (from Windows 2000 to 10), for Linux - ext4 or 3 ( outdated versions). From file system depends on the stability of data storage, the speed of their writing and reading. Each operating system has its own methods for determining available disk space. Even the BIOS shows how much data is available.

By pressing the Del or F1 / F2 key when starting the computer, you can enter the BIOS and, by finding the corresponding menu item (usually at the beginning), view information about the installed disks.

Often users wonder how to increase the amount of hard drives on a PC? Tips on how to remove unnecessary, re-partition volumes are useful only when you have a really large HDD, 500 GB or more. But what about owners of SSD with 60 GB of memory?

Usually, additional space can be increased by replacing the drive. Without disturbing the existing system, you can simply choose external hard disk and use it to access additional space.

Gradual reduction of free space

A computer's hard drive has a limited size that the operating system is constantly trying to take up. Updates are regularly downloaded to the PC: browser, antivirus program, operating system. In Windows 10, each cumulative update is over 500MB in size. The volume of the hard disk will also be greatly reduced from frequent viewing of movies online in high quality HD (one movie requires up to 5 GB).

So, 54 GB can be determined in the BIOS ( SSD drive 60 GB), but free in fact after installing the system and all programs, resource-intensive games no more than 10 GB. If you do not clean the disk, then over time, a decrease in free space is inevitable. This is especially critical for eMMC drives, which rarely exceed 64 GB. As a result, choosing such a drive, you have to come to terms with the fact that there will always be little space on it.

You can constantly increase the free space by regular means of the system. To do this, just click on the disk icon right click mouse and select "Properties" - "Disk Cleanup" (relevant for Windows from 2000 to 10). For Windows 10, you can select from the "Start" menu: "Settings" - "System" - "Storage". Next, you need to select the disk of interest and clean up the folders: "Temporary files", "Other".

SSD capability level

Since the industry and computer technology do not stand still, disks with an increasing amount of information become available to the user every year. Not so long ago, the largest SSD was 1 Tb, but now this figure is 10 Tb, and manufacturers say that this is not the limit. Therefore, in the world of computer technology, development occurs instantly, which makes it possible to reduce the cost of products every year.

If you are buying a netbook for games, then check right away how much disk space is installed in it and whether it is possible to expand the memory. regular laptop uses drives with the expansion of the SATA 3 standard, under this standard you can choose both hybrid SSHD and HHDD systems, as well as classics - mechanical HDDs. The market will also offer bulky but slow SSDs with TLC memory type. In addition, MLC SSD drives are also slowly getting cheaper.

Remember: as soon as the SSD has a chance to decide on a smaller volume than it was before, this will indicate its wear. From this moment until failure, its volume may decrease several times more. Torrent clients load SSDs the most, so using cheap TLC drives is best to stop downloading movies.

meager budget

The most common cause of PC failure is hard drive problems. BIOS motherboard device does not see the entire volume of the drive, there are failures when loading data. If the volume of the hard drive has decreased, then it is necessary to carry out diagnostics.

It is best not to "repair" the disk, but immediately change it to a new one, even if it is smaller in volume. The new device will work for at least a couple of years, and during this time you can change the laptop several times. The quality of modern hard drives is quite satisfactory. To choose the best drive option for your capabilities, you should consider:

• device cost;
• data volume;
• form factor.

To make the correct replacement of a broken HDD, it is better to ask the advice of professionals from service center or a computer store.

The computer market offers a wide variety of devices:

• hard drives;
• solid state drives;
• hybrid devices.

You can get a reliable, large and relatively fast drive with a hybrid device (includes two devices: in the form of a solid-state microcircuit and a classic HDD with a large and fast buffer).

How to restore volume

If your computer starts to boot and work slowly, often hangs even on simple, everyday operations, then the problem is either in a small volume random access memory and a weak processor, or in the HDD. Moreover, errors and overload of the latter with data directly affect the efficiency of the entire system. The drive, to which there are no complaints, works quickly and does not heat up. If it was installed new in the PC, then the amount of available space shown in the BIOS is its “native” one, which was set from the factory.

The real volume of the drive can also be shown by special programs, such as AIDA, HDD Life, service programs for SSD drives. The volume usually seen in these programs is real, taking into account all hidden partitions (sometimes they are used on laptops for backup recovery of the operating system). If your system is licensed ( Windows Vista and newer 7, 8, 8.1, 10), you should not touch this section. Also, do not touch hidden sections. on old laptops after repair or used, with pirated systems, since it will not work physically to restore these sectors of the HDD - they are broken.