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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.
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.
How important are good disks really? Hmm… let me break these down into three posts.
The most obvious reason is that the hard disk is where you store all your programs and data so it is very important to get a hard disk that has enough storage space for your needs. So if you’re the type that hoards all those latest software programs – you get my drift.
Next reason is performance. You got to have a reliable and speedy hard disk since it affects how fast your PC can boost and load programs. If you’ve noticed that the performance of your PC slows down when you have many of these applications and programs open at the same time, then that means your hard disk is getting slow too.
Second to my three-part post regarding the importance of hard disks since I know you can’t get enough (wink-wink).
Have you ever experience your hard disk suddenly conking out on you? I know there are signs but I’ll reserve those for later posts. Anyway, if you haven’t I’ll tell you. I’d rather have my monitor burst into flames since it doesn’t necessarily affect the work I’m doing on my PC. But data (goodness, if data is lost) which happens with an unreliable hard disk can really send me to the hospital. Am I exaggerating? No, I don’t think so.
All your digital photographs, software programs, home videos, music, hardware drivers, documents, etc are copied to another safe location. So even if your main hard-disk runs out of service, you don’t loose any of those irreplaceable treasures.
When you are upgrading the hard-disk of your computer, you can just create a disk image of the original hard-disk and then migrate that disk image onto the new drive. You don’t have to undergo the painful process of reinstalling the OS, all the software or migrating the documents from one hard-disk to another. It’s all done by the disk imaging software.
You have a nice, decent sized 20GB hard drive in your new iMac… but you notice that only 10GB is left! Yes, you did install a number of programs- but not 10GB worth. Or you may have an old Performa with a 1GB hard drive and find you only have 50MB left.
What happened to all that space? Well, the truth is that you probably have many duplicate files on your hard drive. How many? It’s hard to say, but there are a few common things to look for.
Almost every application installs a copy to make sure that you can read the included “ReadMe” file. You probably don’t even use the one copy of SimpleText that came installed on your computer! Use Find File or Sherlock to search for “SimpleText” and delete all but one copy.
