everythingaboutsatahardisk.com

The Sata revolution has almost eliminated all other hard drive technologies(IDE and others) and has grown considerably with the release of terabyte drives that come in the same package footprint. With manufacturers going past the terabyte range like Western Digital that has released an external drive for the Mac at 6 terabytes(actually two 3-terabyte drives combined) the limit is actually again about the technology.

Hard drive technology has developed at breakneck speed in the couple of years but competition from the solid state memory market has been biting at their heels. Today, gadgets come with solid state memory that takes up the function of the hard drive but consuming less power and without the buzzing hum we are used to with hard drives.

Naturally we will come to the limit of hard drive technology which is still moving forward and should be for the near future. But for the next generation of gadgets, it seems only logical to take up solid state memory for they consume less power, have no moving parts and are becoming cheaper year after year.

Other applications of sata hard drives are slowly being replaced by memory sticks in the GB range and only time will tell when the two would catch up. For the PC market however, sata remains as USB 3.0 goes mainstream with bigger capacity and faster access times.

Though hard drives are considered to be some of the most robust gadgets around they can and will eventually fail. Failure of such a storage device can mean lost time and effort for businesses and for those who use them for personal applications in the house the same. So where are we in terms of reliability? Far, for hard drives, considering the sweet medley of precise electromechanical parts and microelectronics they are quite reliable.

Factory defects will always be part of technology as well as software/firmware issues but compared to the millions of drives out on the market they can be considered next to bulletproof. Reliability is a real issue for in the range of terabytes, the potential for lost information is indeed huge.

SATA hard disk enthusiasts will have something to look forward to next month as Toshiba announced the a new 1.8 inch hard drive.

The new hard drive will use low insertion force, or LIF, SATA connectors. What this means is that we’re now going to see hard drives that are actually ten percent smaller compared to the standard size of micro SATA 1.8 inch hard drives.

These new drives have been specifically designed for use with mobile devices like tablets, cameras, portable hard drives and media players, among others. The new line will initially be available in the following hard drive capacities – 160 GB, 200 GB and 220 GB.

Before the handy hard disks came, bulky, metal boxed like devices used to be the hard disks. In the 1950’s, hard disks were as big as cabinet files and were very complex to operate. IBM came with a new one and it was much smaller than the 1950’s hard disk however, it still could not fit a personal computer. It was attached separately to the “mammoth” computer. The hard disks that were sold by other companies (IBM’s rivals) during those times were also huge and contained large magnetic disk packs. These magnetic disk packs rotate continuously, reading files and pieces of information stored in it.

Imagine the personal computer as an “electronic” city. As the user sends commands to the computer, all the computer parts inside are working together to complete the single task the user sent.

Some of the parts’ roles are clear: the motherboard acts as the brain of the computer; the USBs are for additional ports, the LAN is for the internet and so on and so forth. However, do you know the purpose of the RAMs? The computer has two kinds of RAMs, the main and secondary. The main RAM sends the information to the secondary RAM, and the sole purpose of the secondary RAM is to store these said pieces of information. Have you ever wondered why gamers choose high RAMs? Because the speed of the game (graphics, sound etc.) is dependent on how high the RAM is.

Shopping for hard disks? Okay, first, you have to consider is which interface the hard disk drive uses. There are three of them and this is the third:

External solutions galore! The most popular of course is the USB hard disk drive. However there are also Fire wire and Parallel Hard disk drives as alternative solutions. Basis for your choice should be the speed on how date is transferred from and to the hard disk drive and that you have the proper connection for a particular external drive.

Shopping for hard disks? Okay, first, you have to consider is which interface the hard disk drive uses. There are three of them and this is the second:

The next commonly used interface is the SCSI. Apple computers and IBM as well make use of this interface. Compared to the first interface, SCSI is faster but rather more difficult when it comes to installation in certain instances. A special card a cable connection from said card is also needed. Make sure that you have a SCSI card included with the Iomega Jaz drive to avoid any hassle.

Shopping for hard disks? Okay, first, you have to consider is which interface the hard disk drive uses. There are three of them and this is the first:

IBM compatible computers use the IDE interface, which is incidentally one of the more common hard disk drive interfaces. It’s generally easy to install and customize- hence the popularity. From what I know, most computers have about a maximum of four IDE devices – hard disk drive to CD ROM drive. So before purchasing, verify first the available drive locations.

This one’s easier than the defrag article I posted a while ago. I mean if you’re not much into computers, it’s the easiest thing to do. For an easy hard disk cleaning, you can just empty your Recycle or Trash bin regularly. The files or programs that you think you’ve deleted can come back and hunt you since they’re still in the Trash bin. And yes, they’re still taking up space in your hard drive. Another thing you can do is to clean the temporary files that your system keeps for a little documentation.