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| Give me space! Upgrade your hard driveDo you find yourself wanting to install new software, but your computer informs you it has "insufficient disk space"? This means you'll either need to remove some things from your current hard drive, or get a larger one. What is a hard drive? It could be compared to the drawer on your desk where you store things until you are ready to use them. Physically, it consists of several metal disks or platters that spin rapidly, and heads which hover just fractions of a millimeter over them. Electrical impulses from these heads rearrange metallic particles on the platter's surface in much the same way a cassette or VCR tape stores data.The first hard drive on the market for consumer use was a 5 megabyte drive made for the IBM PC. It was visibly huge by today's standards, about the size of two CD ROM drives stacked, and weighed several pounds. Hard drives today which use the common EIDE interface range in size from about 10 gigabytes to over 80 gigs. Seagate introduced a 180 gig SCSI interface drive in November 2000, the largest drive in the world available for IBM compatible computer systems.If you don't use your system for much more than word processing or browsing the net, a 10 to 20 gigabyte drive should be plenty; however, it is a good idea to get the largest drive available at a good price per gigabyte ratio if you plan to keep your system for a while. To upgrade again later you must either replace your primary drive again (and lose that space entirely) or add a second drive. The second drive will become drive D: and will not merged with your current space. Any other drives in your system (such as your CD ROM) will move forward a letter (for example your CD ROM will become E:). For storing digital photos, full-motion video clips, or MP3's, you'll want a larger drive (40 gigabytes is a popular size at this time).Adding a hard drive can also increase the overall speed of operation of your system by speeding up one of the slower parts. By increasing the rpm's at which the hard drive's spindle rotates, hard drive manufacturers have been able to increase the amount of data which can be processed. When the drive spins faster, data passes under the read/write heads quicker, allowing data to be retrieved faster. The standard spindle speed has long been 5400 rpm, but 7200 rpm drives are gaining popularity quickly. Seagate has also released 10,000 rpm drives but so far they are only available in SCSI interface. Another factor related to increased hard drive speed is the data transfer rate. With the inception of Ultra DMA (UDMA), (which uses bus mastering technology) the rate was increased from DMA's 16.6 megabytes per second to 33 mbps. Then, Ultra ATA/66 hit the market, which again doubled the data transfer rate. The next step in drive evolution is Ultra ATA/100 which should catch on within the next few months. Make sure your motherboard will support Ultra ATA/66 or /100. Although the drives are backward compatible, they may only function at 33 mbps on older systems. You will also require a special cable that has 80 high density wires rather than the usual 40. This provides additional grounding wires required to prevent errors at the faster transfer rate. Some proprietary computers will have trouble with newer drives, and may require special formatting software if they will work at all. Check with the manufacturer of your system before making a purchase. With prices on hard drives at an all-time low, now is a good time to get the extra room you need, and you may end up with a bonus increase in speed as well.
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