How to Buy an Internal Hard Drive

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is James, I'm a computer hardware coordinator for InterConnection, and I'm going to show you how to buy a hard drive. When you're buying a hard drive, there are a few different factors that might aid you in what you want to get. One is what type of interface you're using. If you're using the older IDE interface, or you're using the newer serial ATA interface. If you're using one or the other you need to make sure you buy the right hard drive otherwise it's just not going to plug in. Next factor you want to go into is how large of a hard drive do you really need. A lot of people buy very large drives for their photos, but in all actuality they don't have that many photos. So just do a good assessment on really how much space you need. If you're using photos or images, or pictures or music, do yourself a favor. Look at one of those files and look at how big it is. It'll show you right how big it is on Explorer or whatever program you're using, whatever interface you're using. Look at how large that file is and then look at how many you have. Envision, am I going to have twice this many? Three times this many? And then do a little math and figure out how much space you really need. There's no sense buying more hard drive than you really need, or even worse, not getting enough. When you're buying hard drives, there are a couple of other options you might want to consider. One is how fast the hard drive is. This is semi 7200 RPM hard drive, it's serial ATA. This is a 10,000 RPM hard drive, it's also serial ATA. This one will transfer files faster than this one, the disk spins faster in this one, allowing you to transfer the files, large files, faster. So if you're doing video editing or something where you have large files, like you're moving five-hundred megabyte files around all day, you want those files to move where you want them when you want them to move there. So you might want to get a faster hard drive such this 10,000 RPM hard drive. If you're just moving little photos of, you know, pictures of family, that type of thing. You don't need all that speed. You can save yourself some money and just get a 7200 RPM hard drive. It all comes down to what you need. My name is James, computer hardware training coordinator for InterConnection, and I just showed you how to buy a hard drive."