Computer Hardware

Sharing storage between several computers can be done with a networked attached storage (NAS) system. Commercial offerings are usually expensive, even for the low end, but is it easy to make one...

SCSI, the Small Computer System Interface, is a premium hardware design for computer hard drives. All aspects of hard drive performance are improved in a SCSI environment compared to conventional...

Installing a hard drive in a system, whether an add-on or a new drive, can present technical problems. If the motherboard does not support larger hard drives, you may not be able to get the full...

Flash drives are limited in memory but they make up for it in cost and portability. They are great for storing documents, photos or music which don't use a lot of memory, or for regularly...

With so many external hard drives available, it can be confusing trying to find the one for you. Do you need portability, lots of storage capacity, or a both?

Maxtor hard drives are among the most stable and dependable hard drives currently available to the consumer market. Despite this, however, there are certain drawbacks to their implementation that...

Thumb drives, also known as flash drives or jump drives, are small, portable USB memory storage devices. They are small enough to fit in a pocket and have begun to replace floppy disks and compact...

Internal computer hard drives, regardless of manufacturer, are among the most stable and long-lived hardware devices. They are not perfect, however, and problems can and do arise. Even if an...

Notebook hard drives face all the potential problems of desktop internal hard drives. In addition to this, due to their small design and thermal considerations they face a unique set of problems....

SCSI is a data transfer protocol commonly used in servers and older Apple computers. It is far less common than the IDE or SATA protocols and is easily recognized by its smaller-than-average...

Choosing a hard drive can be a difficult task. Hard drives with the same capacity made by different manufacturers are generally priced similarly, making it difficult to determine whether one is...

Rebuild any RAID array other than 0, (because 0 is built for speed not redundancy). If one or more hard disks have failed, you can rebuild the array quickly and with no loss of data. This is...

Connecting external hard drives to a computer will greatly expand the storage capacity of a system while allowing data portability by unplugging the drive and taking it to another computer. Most...

Iomega Zip and Jaz drives were once popular types of removable storage, with respective capacities of 100, 250 or 750MB for Zip drives, and 1 or 2GB for Jaz drives, per removable disk. Although...

Broadband Internet connection is growing and computer users are more than ever sharing photos, videos and other content in digital format. As this continues, storage space---and easier ways to...

There is an image on almost every hard drive among several other tidbits of information. This image may spell out several different abbreviations: SATA, ATA, IDE or PATA. These abbreviations are...

Many people have considered attempting to open a hard drive, whether for the purpose of "modding" it or to recover lost data. Opening a hard drive has a strong possibility of rendering it...

Access a snap server via a Web interface. The drive in a snap server is likely to be a couple of drives in a RAID configuration creating a volume of between 500 GB and 2 TB. If one drive fails,...

External hard drives are a popular storage solution, giving computer users a large amount of easy-to-transport hard disk space that doesn't have the limitations of flash memory drives....

If you are a computer owner, you have probably heard many times about the importance of backing your data up. Unfortunately, this is often easier said than done. Backing up your data takes time...

Computer parts can be expensive, and in an attempt to save money you may be considering buying an OEM drive. If you aren't familiar with what an OEM hard drive is, though, you might be confused...

With the increasing size of media files, games and other computer programs, it is a good idea to have two, if not more, hard drives connected to a computer. This allows specific content to be...

USB drives based on Universal Serial Bus technology are miniature data storage devices. In the past few years, they have quickly supplanted old-generation floppy drives as more effective data...

Floppy drives are drives used in desktop computers to store information of floppy disks. Floppy disks are for small amounts of data (up to 1.44 megabytes). The floppy disk is made of plastic,...

Universal serial bus (USB) flash drives are removable storage devices that offer portability and storage capacities that older storage devices are unable to match. For this reason, USB flash...

ATA and Serial ATA (SATA) are the two classifications of internal hard drives that can be purchased for your computer. Although SATA is a newer technology and capable of higher transfer rates, ATA...

In modern computers, the term "memory" has become synonymous with random access memory or RAM, an essential component of computers that transmits data to the central processing unit.

RAID is a popular method of increasing the hard drive speed or reliability in a computer, and many operating systems have the ability to implement RAID with no additional hardware required. If you...

Apple Macintosh computers tend to have long useful lives. However, when something goes wrong, you don't necessarily need to abandon the old Mac. You can rebuild it. The parts are available,...

While shopping for a new computer or optical drive, you may have wondered about the meaning of the terms "DVD writer" and "DVD drive," and which you should choose. Although some people use the...

External hard drives are an incredibly useful addition to nearly any computer owner's arsenal. They are available in high capacities at price points that rival internal hard drives, with extremely...

For many years, a floppy drive was found in nearly every computer. Although floppy disks (diskettes) largely have been replaced by flash drives and optical media, you may need to install a floppy...

The Parallel ATA (also known as IDE) interface has been used to connect hard drives to computers since the 1980s. Although Parallel ATA was superseded by Serial ATA (SATA) in 2003, hard drives...

Whether you use your computer for business or personal reasons, it is likely you already know that it is important to back up your data. You may have even learned the hard way, by losing something...

There's nothing more frustrating than a PC that crashes and takes all your computer files with it. You must backup computer files often to keep your information at hand. Personally, I lost many...

While the underlying technology in all hard drives is essentially the same, it is the size of the different types of hard drives that sets them apart. Laptops are purchased primarily for their...

Conventional laptop hard drives are essentially the same as desktop hard drives, only smaller. However, because a laptop hard drive must be installed in an extremely tight space, a unique set of...

An external hard drive can be one of the most useful purchases that you could ever make for your computer. At one time or another, nearly everyone could use more storage. However, there are many...

Flash drives are tiny devices that you can use to store data, files and media. The small size is perfect for file sharing on the go. Affordable and convenient, flash drives are handy little...

As computers continue to advance, individual parts that comprise a computer become cheaper as well, allowing for easy upgrades and that little extra "Umph!" you may be looking for. The two...

Six of the most common data storage devices are: 1) hard disks drives, 2) RAM, 3) flash memory, 4) optical drives 5) external hard drives and 6) tape drives. All of this hardware is designed to...

While shopping for a new hard drive, you may have seen the terms "2.5 inch" and "3.5 inch" and wondered what they meant. The two terms describe different form factors that hard drives can be...

ESATA, external Serial ATA, is an external device connectivity specification for hard drives and optical drives. The eSATA specification is a direct extension to the SATA specification used for...

When it comes to computer maintenance, having a properly functioning storage device is essential. A malfunctioning hard drive could make it impossible to recover data, even with the proper...

A USB storage device is any kind of external hard drive or flash drive capable of storing data. These types of storage devices connect to a computer's USB port and are generally lightweight and...

Flash drives are a revolutionary invention that allowed for easy, lightweight and affordable memory for computers and other electronics. Without the advent of this small storage option, things...

One component that laptop computer users commonly choose to upgrade is the hard drive. The majority of laptops do not come with a big hard drive by default. As you add more and more files and...

The ATA, or EIDE, hard drive was for many years the de facto standard for interfacing hard drives and optical disc drives to computer systems. Despite being superseded by the newer SATA standard...

External hard drives have gained a lot of popularity over the last couple of years. This is mainly due to the increasing number of manufacturers who have started producing external hard drives,...

One major component of all computers is the hard drive. Hard drives have advanced significantly over the past five years. Companies and hard drive manufacturers can now cram massive amounts of...