How to Buy an Internal Hard Drive

In the last few years, average hard drive sizes have increased about 400 percent, while the price range from small to big has remained steady. For a home-built PC, you can either save money now and upgrade later, or buy a drive that will be useful for a longer period.

Difficulty:

Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need

• Hard Disks

1. Buy a hard drive with a rotational speed of 7,200 rpm or faster. Expect to spend much less for a 5,400-rpm drive, if they're still available.

2. Look for an average seek time of fewer than 12 milliseconds; 9ms is fast.

3. Look for a data transfer rate of at least 15 megabytes per second.

4. Buy an Ultra ATA/66 drive. Expect to spend much less for a UDMA/33 drive, if they're still available.

5. Buy a SCSI hard drive and SCSI controller card if you want or need the fastest possible drive.

6. Look for a hard disk that holds at least 6GB of data.

7. Buy a hard drive that allows considerable room for programs you'll add and files you'll save.

8. Consider a smaller hard drive if your case has space for an extra drive.

9. If you're buying a high-capacity hard drive, make sure it comes with a five-year warranty. Expect a three-year warranty for all other hard drives.

Tips & Warnings

• You'll need to partition hard drives larger than 8.4GB, and no partition can be larger than 8.4GB.

• Hard drives typically last three to six years.