How to Understand Your Computer Hard Drive
Most people brag about how big their hard drive is. However, most people don't have a understand what a megabyte or gigabyte is. When talking EIED and SATA I get this strange look like, what language are you speaking? They have no idea what really happens when you defrag your hard drive. Yes, I know, there are some computer geeks out there laughing at me, but just hold on a second. Not all people are computer geeks, most are novice computer users that just turn the switch on in the morning, after their coffee.
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Things You'll Need
- Basic Computer Knowledge
- Access to the Internet
- Defragmentation Program
Instructions
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Defrag your computer regularly. Why should I defrag my hard drive? How many people are secretaries out there? Raise your hands. You know when someone has been in your filing cabinet. Well, if something is not filed correctly in the file cabinet it's hard to find. When you are working on your computer the information is filed on your hard drive. Your computer is not the best secretary and sometimes misfiles your work. Also it keeps all partial work and activities. You know what I mean secretaries, keep those hand up. Even with a file cabinet you have to go in from time to time and clean it out. You have to remove old files and straighten out the misfiled documents. That is what defragmenting your hard drive does.
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Compare hard drive sizes. How big is my hard drive? Well, contrary to what some people believe size does matter, when it comes to your hard drive. Just like your filing cabinet the bigger the cabinet the more you can store. However, when it comes to a hard drives, programs have controlled the growth of hard drives. As programs have become larger the need for bigger hard drives for storage has increased. Just like a business using file cabinets, the more clients the larger the filing cabinets. Now, people are downloading music, movies and programs which require more hard drive space than was ever imagined.
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Understand the terms used to measure your hard drive size. How is a hard drive measured? Here is a little technical information for stimulating the electrical impulses of the brain. As the hard drives got larger the terms used to describe the size has changed. The 51/4 and 31/2 floppy drives used kilobytes. The older hard drives used megabytes. We are now using gigabytes and terabytes. However, there are terms to cover our future usage of hard drives. When you purchase hard drives you will find they are 60, 80, 120, 250, 320, 500 and larger gigabyte hard drives. Now larger hard drives are available which are a terabyte or more. If you want to understand the orders of magnitude for digital information storage check my resources.
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Identify the type of hard drive you have. What type of hard drives is in my computer? You will find that the newest computers, including laptops and notebooks, have SATA hard drives. SATA drives offer some advantages over EIDE hard drives with faster data transfer. The cabling is attached with a 7 pin cable compared to the 40 pin cable. The Enhanced IDE drive was an improvement over the older IDE standard hard drive. You will find some computers still have the EIDE drives if you are purchasing refurbished or used. The new netbooks and laptops are promoting solid state hard drives with no moving parts. The cost for SATA solid state drives is higher than the standard SATA drives because of the new technology. The solid state drives will allow for slimmer laptops, faster transfer rates and higher reliability.
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Tips & Warnings
Research your make and model on the internet. If you can not find reviews that explain what you have for a hard drive contact the manufacturer.
Set a schedule to clean up old files and defrag your hard drive.
Make sure to backup your hard drive on a regular basis.
Always check your hard drive space. If you go below recommended storage space it could crash.
Resources
- Photo Credit dpawatts
