Picking the Perfect Hard Drive

Photos, music, videos, and documents: we are drowning in data these days. Steve, our Hook Me Up subject, needed more space to save his recorded music files, but coudn't we all benefit from a little extra storage capacity? You can burn DVDs or CDs, but for immediate access to files, nothing beats an external hard drive.

When you are buying a hard drive, the major considerations are size, speed, connection type, power and networking.

Size
The bigger the better, but you'll pay for it. The general rule of thumb is to buy a bigger drive than you think you need. Upsizing is a way to future-proof your system–fighting obsolescence by preparing for bigger files and more data in your future.

If you are manipulating large video files on a regular basis, you'll need a big drive. If you are backing up your system, you'll need a big drive. But if you're only storing your family photos or word documents, you can get away with a smaller drive.

Speed
A hard drive consists of a spinning platter and a magnetic needle that reads and writes the data on the platter. Visually it looks a lot like a record player, and using that analogy there are multiple speeds that the platter can turn. It's a little like LPs and 45's on a record player.

The most common hard drive speeds are 7200 rpm and 5400 rpm. Performance increases when the speed of the drive is faster: the data is spit out of the drive quicker and is ready and waiting for you. If you are really desperate to save a few bucks and you will only use the hard drive for documents and small files, consider a slower 5400 rpm drive. Larger files like video and audio are not as easy to manipulate on slower drives. Most of the new drives are in the 7200 speed range.

Connection
Hard drives can be internal and external. Internal drives must fit the form factor of your computer, and the installation involves unscrewing the case. External drives are a much more versatile and simple way to add capacity. USB 2.0 and Firewire are two common and fast ways to connect an external drive; but before you buy a drive, make sure your computer has a connection port (either USB 2.0 or Firewire) that corresponds to the drive you are purchasing.

Power & Networking
Most external hard drives must be connected to a computer for power—in other words they don't have their own power plugs. Some hard drives called Network Attached Storage (NAS) drives come with their own power adapter and operate independent of a computer. These hard drives are plugged into network routers so any computer attached to the router (wireless or wired) can access the data on the NAS drive. These are great for sharing data between computers and for music devices like the Sonos Digital Music System.

If you want to learn more about what to look for when buying a new hard drive, check out the  PC World Hard Drive Buying Guide.