The Refurbished Laptops Guide » Hard Drives

How To Speed Up a Hard Drive

GuestPoster — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 05:31:54 +0000

Hard disk speed can significantly influence the machine functioning. Even if the computing machine has powerful CPU, good memory, a slow hard disk can be a bottleneck in the computing machine. It could be expensive to substitute the hard drive. A user can do many maintenance and tuning to improve hard disk velocity in a machine. De-fragment the hard drive at least once in six months.

In the Microsoft Windows explorer, right click on the drive. Click on “Properties” menu. In the Properties window go to the “Tools” tab. Click on “Defragment Now” button. This will pack all the data in the drive together as well as improve hard disk. Run hard disk mistake check to improve hard disk velocity. In the Microsoft Windows explorer right click on the drive. Click on “Properties” menu. In the properties window go to the “Tools” tab. Click on “check Now” button. This will check and fix any mistake. Fixing error will improve hard disk speed to some extent.

You can also enable write caching. In the Windows explorer right click on the drive. Click on “Properties” menu. In the properties window go to the “Hardware” tab. Choose the hard disk to velocity up from the list. Click on the “Properties” button. In the properties window go to the Hardware tab. select “Optimize for functioning” radio button as well as select the look for box “Enable Write caching on the disk”. Letting this substitute betters hard disk velocity.

Hard drives often become cluttered after prolonged use as well as it is a good idea to defragment them every thus frequently. For your key drive that you hold most, I suggest a defrag every 6-12 months. Consider more such frequently if you down load lots of music as well as videos from the Internet. By defragging your drive, you will free up more such space and files will load faster. Defragging a drive is really a easy action. Every PC should come with a program called ‘Disk Defragmenter.’ To find it, simple click the Microsoft Windows button or start button as well as find the ‘Accessories’ folder. There should be another folder called ’scheme tools.’ In this folder is where Disk Defragmenter is found. Click the icon to open the programme. constantly analyze a drive before you defrag.

Sometimes a drive will not actually need to be defragmented, it just depends on how much you apply it and if you are constantly installing/uninstalling programmes or files. If the programme suggests which a drive be defragmented, start the action as well as let it run overnight. It is not a great idea to run other programmes while a drive is defragging.

This article about improve hard disk speed is based on information publicly available on answers.yahoo.com and testinternetspeed.

Shopping:

Acomdata Samba USB 2.0 3.5-Inch IDE/SATA Hard Drive Enclosure SMBXXXU2E-BLK (Black)

HornetTek Goliath USB 3.0 Hard Drive Enclosure with Fan HT-318-U3-RED (Red)

Sony HDR-XR150 29 Piece Pro Kit With 5 Years Extended Warranty , Lens Cleaning Kit , Card case Holds 3 cards , High speed card reader , Table top Tripod , Camcorder Light , LCD protector , 4GB high speed card , 3 piece Filter kit , Rain sleeve , Soft case , 2X Professional High Definition telephoto Lens , 0.5 X professional high Definition wide Angle Lens , Close-up Macro Set , Deluxe camcorder Bag , Pop Abrella , HDMI Cable , External Microphone , Extra High power Battery , Rapid Battery Charger

Canon HFM30 29 Piece Pro Kit with 5 Years Ext warranty Plan , 3 Piece Lens Cleaning Kit , Card case Holds 3 cards , High speed card reader , Table top Tripod , ultra compact with flexible wire leg , Camcorder Light , LCD protector , 16GB high speed card, 3 piece Filter kit, Rain sleeve, Soft case, full size Tripod, 2X Professional High Definition telephoto Lens with Lens Case , 0.5 X professional high Definition wide Angle Lens With land case , Close-up Macro Set, Deluxe camcorder Bag , Pop Abrella , External Zoom Microphone , High Power Battery Pack , HDMi Cable , Professional 58mm Digital video Lens Hood With Cap and cap keeper , Extra Cam Rudder : Excellent Handle For Video and cameras

Canon HFS20 29 Piece Pro Kit with 5 Years Ext warranty Plan , 3 Piece Lens Cleaning Kit , Card case Holds 3 cards , High speed card reader , Table top Tripod , ultra compact with flexible wire leg , Camcorder Light , LCD protector , 16GB high speed card , 3 piece Filter kit , Rain sleeve, Soft case, full size Tripod , 2X Professional High Definition telephoto Lens , 0.5 X professional high Definition wide Angle Lens , Close-up Macro Set , Deluxe camcorder Bag , Pop Abrella , External Zoom Microphone , High Power Battery Pack , Rapid Battery Charger , HDMi Cable , Professional 58mm Digital video Lens Hood With Cap and cap keeper , Extra Cam Rudder : Excellent Handle For Video and cameras ,

Grab a USB harddrive today

Brent — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 01:02:45 +0000

So, you’re in the market for a USB harddrive are you? Yep, you and everybody else out there right now who wants to keep things portable. Your entire professional or personal life (at least the data part of it) can be carried around right now in a little box no bigger than the size of your hand. Pretty cool, huh? These portable drives can be taken anywhere you go, and can be carried in your hand, in a purse, in laptop bags, and in the case of flash drives, even in your wallet. Business meetings are a breeze with them; just show up, plug in, and get going. Think about how many powerpoint presentations you can fit into something the size of a normal harddrive.

Yes, a USB external harddrive is a great tool for business, but it also can do wonders for you personally. Have you ever had a computer crash and lose all of your data? We’ve all had that happen at one point or another I’m sure. I know I have; in fact, it happened just a few weeks back. If I’d have had an external drive to backup all of my stuff to, well, I wouldn’t have lost all of that valuable data. Certain USB harddrives will allow you to automatically backup your data on a set schedule. The software that comes with the drive will actually let you schedule your backups for any time of the day. That’s great because you don’t want your day interrupted by a program doing a full backup; you can just set it up to do it while you’re sleeping at night. Set the calendar program, press “schedule,” and it’s all set. Long gone are the “drag and drop” days of backing up (though, that still does have its place).

Not only can you back up your files, these things are extremely portable. The more portable the drive is though, the more expensive it will tend to be (again,excluding flash drives). The very small types of drives with large capacities (500 GB or more) are going to run $200+ with a USB interface. That’s certainly more expensive than getting an internal drive, but if you consider that an internal harddrive would require you to carry an entire laptop around, well, suddenly the price is a little bit more worth it.

So, a portable USB harddrive can really help you out no matter who you are and what you do. Check them out at just about anywhere computer peripherals are sold.

Shopping:

Toshiba 640 GB USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Dive HDDR640E04XR (Rocket Red)

Seagate FreeAgent Go 500 GB USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive ST905003FGA2E1-RK (Silver)

Iomega eGo USB 2.0 500 GB Compact Portable Hard Drive 34895 (Ruby Red)

Western Digital WD Elements 2 TB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive WDBAAU0020HBK-NESN

Seagate Expansion 640 GB USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive ST906404EXA101-RK

Selecting the best backup drives

Brent — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 23:04:10 +0000

Backup drives should be a necessary part of your computing experience, especially if you run a business or have a lot of your important personal documents online. You might also have software on your computer that costs hundreds to thousands of dollars, and if you lose those programs, you could be out of a lot of money. Naturally you want to avoid the pain of losing data: we’ve all been there. In fact just several weeks ago my nice new laptop stopped booting up at the main Windows screen, necessitating a full format and reinstall. Of course for whatever reason, the files I backed up to the D:\ partition were long gone once the install process was complete. Unbelievable stuff! Unfortunately I didn’t have the foresight to back everything up to an external drive before I did that, so I’m going to save you a little heartache today with this post.

Backup hard drives are a dime a dozen these days, and no, you don’t have to resort to those old tape backup drives people used to have (and still do have!). Those old tapes were known to have issues storing data for long periods of time, and any scratch or write error on a tape can destroy the whole volume of data. Not fun. Luckily we live in the 21st century where backup drives are plentiful. They come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, and are generally powered by USB for smaller applications. A USB hard drive is typically what you’ll want for an at-home computer that may not have too many important documents on them. These are generally very trustworthy as long as you get brand names such as Seagate and Western Digital. Others are fine, but if you stick with those two names you know for a fact that your data will be safe in the long run.

For larger business applications, you might want to consider a full RAID array. A RAID array is a type of backup drive system that runs multiple hard drives in parallel, each backing itself up to the rest of the array. Large businesses with important financial documents may have dozens of hard drives in such an array, spread out over multiple locations to protect that data from being lost all at once. This is probably overkill for your own house (unless you happen to run a business), but if you have the money and really need this much redundancy, you cannot go wrong with a RAID setup.

Those are the two types of backup drives I wanted to talk about today, so stay tuned for more later!

Shopping:

Clickfree Automatic Backup 250 GB USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive HD225 (Cherry Red)

Toshiba Canvio Plus 640 GB USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive E05A064CAU2XR (Rocket Red)

LaCie 301838U 2TB Hard Disk MAX by Neil Poulton Dual Drive RAID External Hard Drive

Toshiba 320 GB USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive HDDR320E04XW (Vivid White)

Seagate FreeAgent Go 500 GB USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive ST905003FGA2E1-RK (Silver)

Buying the best 1TB internal hard drive

Brent — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 22:20:53 +0000

The 1TB internal hard drive is a relative newcomer into the market. Up until recently, hard drives were only available up to around 750GB, and even then that was huge. If you remember even within the past 7-8 years, even a 20GB hard drive was impressive! Not anymore. Now we have something that’ll blow the socks off of anything we had back then. Now we’re talking about terabytes. That is, a thousand gigabytes. People up until now haven’t even been able to think that big!

So, let’s get down to basics. 1TB internal hard drives come in a variety of shapes, sizes, and most important, quality assessments. Not all are created equal; some companies simply put out better products than others. Purchasing a no-name drive isn’t going to save you money in the long run, even if it costs less up front. Imagine the cost of replacing the data that was stored on it! No thanks. So, I personally think Seagate is one of the best out there. The company has been producing hard drives since 1979, and does it quite well. The Seagate 1TB internal hard drive is no exception: It’s affordable and robust. Their Barracuda 7200.11 is one of the leading drives on the market today with a 3 GB/s (yes, 3 gigabytes per second…not bad!) transfer rate over SATA. It boasts a 32MB cache, which makes bringing up most smaller applications and documents a very quick task. It’s also offered in a 7200 RPM format, which means the seek speed on the drive itself is very quick and sure. This internal drive can be bought and installed for cheap…often as little as $80-$100. However, being that this is a larger drive meant for desktops, you’ll probably have to convert it for laptop use. In that case, you’ll need to buy an enclosure in order to hook it up. These hard drive enclosures can be hooked up via USB to your laptop fairly easy, so no worries there. Currently Seagate does not offer an internal 1TB hard drive. Sorry!

Now, let’s get talking about companies that do offer a laptop hard drive in this size. A Western Digital 1TB internal hard drive may just be your best bet if you don’t want to go out and buy an expensive enclosure. The Western Digital Scorpio Blue is a 2.5″ hard drive built specifically for notebooks. This is a hard drive much on the same level as the Seagate, with a few drawbacks: it has a 3 GB/s transfer rate, but it has a 5200 RPM seek speed (vs. 7200 above), and only an 8MB cache. That’s alright…what it lacks in speed it’ll make up for in space, right? This drive is also cheap: It can be found new for $100 or so.

Shopping:

Western Digital 1 TB Scorpio Blue SATA 5200 RPM 8 MB Cache Bulk/OEM Notebook Hard Drive WD10TPVT

Western Digital 1 TB Caviar Green SATA Intellipower 64 MB Cache Bulk/OEM Desktop Hard Drive WD10EARS

Western Digital Internal Hard Drive 1.5 TB Caviar GreenPower SATA WD15000CSRTL

Western Digital Caviar Black 1 TB Desktop Hard Drive (WD1002FAEX)

Hitachi 1 TB Deskstar SATA 7200 RPM 32 MB Cache Internal Hard Drive HD31000 IDK/7K - Retail

Buying a media hard drive

Brent — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 20:24:56 +0000

How many of you are interested in picking up a media hard drive to use with your laptop? If you’re like most of America, that answer is probably pretty easy to guess! Media hard drives have become some of the most popular laptop and computer accessories on the market today, and encompass a whole other part of your computing experience we haven’t talked much about on this blog: Entertainment. Yes, entertainment is the biggest factor behind getting a media hard drive. It’s what allows us to wind down after work, and allows us a little extra quality of life when we’re feeling stressed. So, let’s talk about these things, and how they apply to you.

So what are they? These media drives allow you to transfer TV shows, movies, and other forms of media from your computer to your television. That’s right, you can actually watch your downloaded iTunes movies on something OTHER than your laptop. That’s a very nice thing to have if you’ve ever found yourself staring at a 13″ screen while there’s a 40″ screen in the corner being ignored!

How do they work? An external media hard drive operates much like a wireless hard drive does; it’s either a standalone system, or is easily incorporated into your existing network interface. Certain drives will plug straight in to your router and allow your television to receive the data it’s transmitting. There is a slight issue with this, however. Most televisions that aren’t less than a year old (and even most that are brand new) have no capability to actually interface with a network. That’s quite alright. There are devices that are available on the market now that will allow your TV to interface with the router wirelessly (or wired, depending on the model), and in that way will allow you to access what’s stored on the media drive.

Some of these home media network hard drive systems are what we call “standalone,” simply because they don’t require a network interface to work. These have transmitters and receivers built straight in, and don’t need you to hook them in to a router. Of course the above problem is still staring right at us: How do you get your television to interface with it? Again, you’ll just have to go out and buy a device that’ll allow that to happen. Most can be bought for fairly cheap, and can be found wherever media hard drives are sold.

Did that answer your questions? I hope so. See you next time.

Shopping:

HP Pocket Media Drive 500 GB USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive HPBAAA5000ASL-NHSN (Black/Silver)

NBOX TV Media Player - Supports SD/USB Drive/USB External Hard Drive - Plays DIVX/AVI/RMVB/RM/XVID/MPG

Nbox HD 1080p TV Media Player with HDMI Out - Supports SD, USB Drive, USB External Hard Drive - Plays Your Favorite Video, Music, Pictures and E-Books on Your TV or Home Theater System - No PC Required

Case Logic Compact Portable Hard Drive Case (Black)

Western Digital Hard Carrying Case for My Passport Portable Drives WDBABJ0000NBK-NRSN - Black

Which wireless hard drive brands are best?

Brent — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 17:50:32 +0000

If you were to go out and buy a wireless hard drive today, which one would you get? If you answered “I don’t know,” then you’re probably just like most people out there today. Heck, most people don’t even know what this is to begin with! Well, if you’re one of those and are unfamiliar, I’ll help you out today. A wireless hard drive is a hard drive that isn’t actually physically connected to your computer. Data is sent over a wireless network, and the hard drive doesn’t even need to be in the same room. All you have to do is sync your computer to it and it’ll back up your data by itself over the airwaves. Pretty fancy, eh?

Well, there are drawbacks to this design. First and foremost, data transfer rate is abysmal compared to the normal USB transfer rate. USB allows very quick data rates, while a wireless external hard drive is severely limited by the fact that each “packet” of information must be sent one by one in sequence. There’s currently no “paralleling” available for packeted information sent over a wireless system. It’s much like your internet: You only get data as fast as your bandwidth allows. The same is true for wireless hard drives. Keep that in mind before you buy.

The Iomega 33349 StorCenter is one of the most capable and popular wireless drives on the market today. This is actually a hard drive that plugs in directly to your router or switch, and is not a standalone system with its own receiver attached. However, the function is basically the same. Any computer (be it a laptop, desktop, smart phone, etc.) can access the drive on that local network whenever the hard drive is actually hooked up. This actually affords a bit more security than if you were to have it available to the public. Wannabe hackers must first get into your personal network, THEN break into your router. This fixes that.

ASUS actually produces their “Asus Wireless Storage Router,” which operates very much the same as the Iomego, except that the ASUS is accessible to the public, and isn’t actually protected behind a DMZ. This does at least add a bit of ease of use, but security may be a concern for those who require a bit more in terms of keeping their data safe. However, should you not want to use this function, this wireless network hard drive allows you to plug straight into it with an Ethernet cable.

All in all, you can’t go wrong with either of these. Good luck!

Shopping:

Dell Studio 1555 Laptop Computer 15.6-Inch Chainlink Black Laptop - Windows 7 Home Premium, 2.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T6600 Processor, 4GB Memory, 500GB Hard Drive, Wireless, Up to 8 Hours of Battery Life

HEWLETT PACKARD - HP - TM2T TABLET PC - Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit , Intel(R) Pentium(R) Processor SU4100 (1.3GHz,2M Cache) w/Intel(R) Graphics Media Accelerator 4500MHD , 8 GB DDR3 SDRAM, 500GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive with HP ProtectSmart Hard Drive Protection ,External Tray Lightscribe Blu-Ray ROM with SuperMulti DVD+/-R/RW Double Layer , 12.1" diagonal WXGA High-Definition HP LED Widescreen (1280x800) with Integrated Touch-screen , WEBCAM, Intel Wireless-N Card, Bumptop(TM), DigiFish(R) Dolphin, Corel(R) Paint it! Touch(TM), Megatouch Games , HP Color Matching Keyboard

Iomega 33349 Gigabit Ethernet 1TB 4HD X 250GB StorCenter Wireless Network Storage

Masscool 640GB MP-1369S HDMI 1080i standalone Hard Drive Multimedia Player w/Wireless Remote - Retail

TRENDnet 1-Bay Diskless Wireless USB 2.0 IDE Network Attached Storage Enclosure TS-I300W (Blue)

500GB hard drive: Why you should get one

Brent — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 23:09:39 +0000

If you’re in the market for a 500GB hard drive, now is the time to get one. The prices are absolutely the lowest they’ve been in years; with the economy in shambles and the larger technology manufacturers having trouble getting people to buy their products with a high markup, the companies have decided to try a new approach. What they’re doing is focusing on volume. When they focus on volume, they’ll lower the markup (down to just a few dollars, even) just to try to sell more of them. In that way, they can still recoup their profits.

So, what makes a 500GB hard drive for your laptop so enticing to most people? The answer to that is easy: Massive amounts of storage space. If you have a large number of iTunes songs, pictures, games, etc., you’ll definitely benefit from having an almost black hole worth of space to throw it all into. These hard drives usually come in two flavors: Internal and external. External 500GB hard drives are by far the most popular for those with laptops, and that’s no wonder. Internal drives are difficult to install and configure when it comes to laptops; the case must be pulled apart, all of the electronics are jammed into a small space, and there’s a greater chance of accidentally breaking a delicate component.

Externals on the other hand are extremely easy. All they usually require is a bit of software installed on your computer (though, if you have a Windows XP laptop or any number of Vista laptops the drivers may be taken care of for you), and a USB 2.0 plugin. Some of these larger hard drives still support USB 1.1, but very few still do nowadays. If you buy something like a 500GB hard drive for your system, I’d recommend ensuring that you have the latest USB enabled (2.0). Now, let me tell you this before we continue: You need to be wary of the “no-name” brands of externals. Some of these are very amateurishly-built drives stuck into an enclosure. If you’re basing that for all of your backup needs, you’re going to be sorely disappointed when it one day stops working. If you’re that adamant about getting the cheap stuff instead of name brand (such as Western Digital), you should really consider a RAID array to keep everything backed up. For an internal drive, this is of course no matter.

I hope this has given you at least a small primer on why you should pick up a 500GB hard drive. With prices down near $50 USD, there’s not much excuse.

Shopping:

Iomega Prestige 500 GB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive 34270

Western Digital Scorpio Blue 500 GB Bulk/OEM Hard Drive 2.5 Inch, 8 MB Cache, 5400 RPM SATA II WD5000BEVT

Western Digital 2 TB Caviar Green SATA Intellipower 64 MB Cache Bulk/OEM Desktop Hard Drive WD20EARS

Seagate FreeAgent Go 500 GB USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive ST905003FAA2E1-RK (Black)

Western Digital Caviar Blue 500 GB Bulk/OEM Hard Drive 3.5 Inch, 16 MB Cache, 7200 RPM SATA II WD5000AAKS

A word on the 2.5″ hard drive

Brent — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 19:44:44 +0000

The 2.5″ hard drive has become the de-facto standard in most laptops that come out onto the market these days. That’s for good reason: it’s a universal hard drive that fits just about every system, and comes in a very wide variety of makes, models, sizes, and speeds. Chances are, if you’re looking for a new hard drive for your computer, you’ll be looking for the 2.5″ model.

These drives come in a number of flavors; the most common is the SATA 2.5″ hard drive, which is just about as standard as drives get. It’s usually available in 5400 and 7200 RPM (just like your old IDE drives…remember those?), and come in just about any size you could want. The highest level SATA drives can be found in upwards of 2 terabytes, which is more than enough for the largest iTunes or anime fans out there. Let’s discuss some specific drives:

The Toshiba MK5055GSX is a very popular drive for most types of laptops; this 2.5 inch SATA hard drive is an internal device that comes with 500GB of space (again, plenty, even for gamers), an 8MB memory buffer, spins at 5400 RPM, and has a 3GB/sec transfer rate over SATA. It’s a solid hard drive from a solid company, so you can be sure that you’re getting one of the best products on the market. Better yet, you can pick one up for about $90. Long gone are the days when 500GB drives were only made in small batches and sold with price tags in the thousands. It’s a great world we live in, isn’t it?

Another 2.5″ you might want to look into is the Seagate ST9320423AS Momentus 7200.4. This drive is also SATA, and while it doesn’t have as much space as the Toshiba offering above (the Seagate “only” has 320GB), it’s faster. It’s got a 7200 RPM seek speed and 16MB buffer, which more than makes up for the difference in space when compared to the Toshiba. This Seagate also has a leg up: the price. You get the speed and most of the speed of the above drive at a lower price. Most Seagate Momentus 7200.4 models in 500GB can be found at around $70. To me, this is a better deal than the Toshiba. While there’s certainly nothing wrong with spending an extra $20 for more space, the increase in speed is great for someone who doesn’t have to have that extra bit of space for gaming or other large projects.

Stay tuned, everybody. As always if we see some more information on what you can do with 2.5″ hard drives we’ll be the first to share it!

Shopping:

OCZ Technology 60 GB Core Series V2 SATA II 2.5 Inch Solid State Drive (SSD) OCZSSD2-2C60G

Western Digital Caviar Black 1 TB Desktop Hard Drive (WD1002FAEX)

Acomdata Tango USB 2.0/eSATA 2.5-Inch SATA Hard Drive Enclosure TNGXXXUSE-RED (Red)

CaseCrown Padded Compartment Compact Hard Drive Case (Pink) For Western Digital WDXMS1200TN Passport 120 GB USB 2.0 2.5-Inch Portable Hard Drive

Mobile Storage Solution 2.5" SATA Hard Drive Enclosure USB + FireWire 1394 ports

The USB hard drive: THE best peripheral

Brent — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:17:30 +0000

Let me tell you this: From my experience, a USB hard drive is one of the most useful peripherals you can have when it comes to your laptop. The uses of such a drive are many: You can add capacity to an existing system without taking apart your laptop and physically adding a new hard drive, you can keep all of your data intact without reformatting (see #1), you can keep private data away from your main system, have a great place to store your pictures, movies, etc., and best yet: You can make full backups of everything you do on your laptop. Take it from a person who has lost a lot of data over the years due to computer crashes: Having backups is going to save you lots of heartache and frustration. You’ll always have two copies of all of your essential data, pictures of loved ones, etc.

So why an external USB hard drive and not other types? It’s simple, really: A USB connection is universal (duh), in that it connects to just about every personal computer known to man at this point in time. USB peripherals are all over the industry at this point: everything from printers to a simple USB wireless card are available in the Universal Serial Bus format. If your own personal laptop fails, you can be quite sure that you’ll find another computer with a USB 2.0 port that’ll allow you to retrieve your backup data. There’s no fear of having a “brick,” which is the geek’s way of referring to a piece of hardware that’s, well, useless or outright dead.

Another great thing about getting a USB external hard drive is that they’re cheap. I mean, really cheap. A 2 terabyte (yes, you heard that right…terabyte) USB 2.0 drive from Seagate will run you about, oh, $200-$300 USD depending on where you get it. You couldn’t get anything near that with a standard internal notebook hard drive. Heck, I don’t even think such a hard drive even exists right now outside of external form.

I will say this, though: This thing is pretty big. I mean, it sits beside your laptop, and is a full 7″ tall and 2″ wide. It’s not going to clutter up your desk, but the wiring and space it may take up will be something you’ll want to think about before going out to the store and picking one up. Honestly though, I think I could live with the space it takes up on the desk when it gives me a bottomless pit of data at my fingertips. Imagine the size of your iTunes collection after you get this bad boy. Disclaimer: I did not just tell you to go out and spend all of your money on iTunes to fill this up, so don’t send me your nasty letters.

Alright everyone, as always, stay tuned right here and we’ll talk later on about more USB hard drive information you might be interested in.

Shopping:

Toshiba 320 GB USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive HDDR320E04XW (Vivid White)

Western Digital 1 TB Scorpio Blue SATA 5200 RPM 8 MB Cache Bulk/OEM Notebook Hard Drive WD10TPVT

Iomega Prestige 500 GB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive 34929 (Gray)

Toshiba Canvio Plus 500 GB USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive E05A050CAU2XK (Raven Black)

Seagate Expansion 640 GB USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive ST906404EXA101-RK

Notebook hard drive selection

Brent — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 23:18:23 +0000

What do you look for in a notebook hard drive? Are you looking for size? Speed? A mixture of the two? Depending on what you need your laptop for will determine what type of drive you actually need. In this post I’ll discuss some of the features included in a hard drive, and what you should look for when purchasing one based on your personal or business needs.

The first thing that obviously comes to mind when looking for a notebook hard drive is the size of the actual drive itself. Drives in 2009 are well past the “huge” 10 gigabyte models we used to see even in the early 2000s; nowadays hard drives can be purchased in stores, right off the shelves, with up to a terabyte worth of storage. If you’re the type of person who needs a lot of space (particularly for business purposes), you may consider purchasing such a drive. Western Digital sells the 1 terabyte model for as little as $250 USD, which is an absolute steal for the amount of space that you get with that. remember the days when a 1 gigabyte model used to cost that much! If you’re on a bit of a budget, you can opt for a smaller (but still plenty large) drive of 120+ gigabytes, spending only $100-$150 in the process. If you’re into gaming, you may consider opting for something larger than 120 gigabytes, however. While 120 gigabytes is fine and good for most people, heavy gamers can easily find themselves low on space due to the fact that games can take up 10+ gigabytes each. Decide what you need before you head to the store. In the event that you’re buying refurbished laptops, check with the seller of the system before you make your decision. Ask about what the previous owner used the laptop for.

The other thing you should look for in a hard drive is the rotational speed of the internal mechanism itself. Typically these are either 5400 RPM or 7200 RPM, with the higher RPMs naturally giving the better user experience. Buyer beware: buying a hard drive with 5400 RPM will have a noticable difference if you’re coming from a 7200 RPM model. Larger hard drives often come in lower RPMs (but not always), with the high-RPM, high-capacity hard drives costing a pretty penny. Again, if you’re running applications that require fast processing (such as games that are frame rate sensitive), opting for a high-RPM drive is a must, even if your wallet requires you to skimp on capacity. Just like before, decide on what you need your hard drive for. If you’re buying a drive to store documents, pictures, or other such items, a 5400 RPM drive may be just fine.

All in all, a notebook hard drive can either make or break your computing experience!

Shopping:

Silver 2.5" SATA Hard Drive Enclosure

Western Digital Caviar Black 1 TB Desktop Hard Drive (WD1002FAEX)

OCZ Technology 120 GB Colossus Lite Series SATA II 3.5-Inch Solid State Drive (SSD) OCZSSD2-1CLSLT120G

Western Digital My Passport SE for Mac 1 TB USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive WDBABW0010BSL-NESN (Silver)

Toshiba Canvio Plus 500 GB USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive E05A050CAU2XK (Raven Black)