Kinds of Hard Drives

There are currently five major hard drive types. All five kinds of hard drives are used by a variety of different devices. However, they all serve one main purpose: to store data.

Internal Desktop

Internal desktop hard drives are the hard drives commonly found in full tower, mid tower and mini tower desktop computers. These hard drives are 3.5 inches in size and come in three major connection types: ultra, IDE and SATA. Storage capacity for internal desktop hard drives currently starts at 30GB and goes all the way up to 2TB.

Laptop Internal

Laptop internal hard drives are the hard drives found in standard sized laptops and netbooks. These hard drives are 2.5 inches in size and come in three major connection types: ATA, IDE and SATA. Storage capacity for laptop internal hard drives is currently available from 30GB to 1TB.

Solid State

Solid state drives are the newest type of computer storage. Rather then using moving parts to record data, solid state drives store all your computer's information on an instant RAM drive. These drives are commonly 2.5 inches in size. However, the hard drive manufacturer OCZ has recently debut a 3.5 inches solid state drive. Solid state drives capacities currently range from 8GB to 1TB.

External

External hard drives are another popular kind of hard drive. External drives allow for easy backup of your files as another method of storing your data. Full-sized external hard drives feature an enclosure with a 3.5-inch desktop hard drive inside. Portable external hard drives feature an enclosure with a 2.5-inch laptop hard drive inside. External hard drives range in capacity from 40GB to 2TB. However, some enclosures feature dual drive technology, which allows placement of two hard drives which will allow up to 4TB of data. External hard drives can connect to your computer using ESATA, Firewire400, Firewire800, USB or ethernet.

Internal Mini Hard Drives

Internal mini hard drives are commonly found in ultra-compact computers such as Apple's MacBook Air. These hard drives are 1.8-inch in size and use a PATA connection. These 1.8-inch drives currently do not offer as much storage capacity as the other kinds of hard drives. Currently, 1.8-inch PATA drives are available in both solid state format and disc format. Capacities for these drives range from 5GB to 250GB.

References

• PC Mag
• Tech Warehouse General Info