Cheap Hard Drive Buyer's Guide
A hard drive upgrade will benefit your computer a lot as with todays Internet downloading frenzy, you'll have probably noticed that you never seem to have enough hard drive space!
The first matter to consider when shopping for a hard drive is the size in GBs it can store. You might as well go for the largest you can find as to be honest, the price difference between a drive that is 120Gb and one that is 500GB is hardly much. Hard drives are alot cheaper than you think. Although you are aiming for a cheap hard drive, you must not settle for anything less than what you would require. A 120GB hard drive may be sufficient for many, especially for individuals who do not deal with large files, but it may not be enough for those who are not just casual computer users. Those who save large files—such as videos files for editing, tons of other data such as pictures, among others—or those who store data in bulk should get something larger. Those who use several programs may also want to go beyond the standard 120GB hard drive. The smaller size for a hard drive is 40GB (which is extremely basic, almost negligible, size), while the largest as of 2009 is 2 TB (or terabyte, which is equivalent to 1000 GB or gigabytes).
A few things on speed... Such as rotation speed, PATA (Parallel ATA), Sata specification etc. The rational speed determines the speed of the drives' spinning disk and will have a direct affect on the overall speed in which data can be accessed. Many experts say that 7200rpm is standard and sufficient, although some may prefer faster hard drives. The faster hard drives have speeds of 10000rpm or higher like the WD Raptor. PATA also referred to as IDE is fast becoming obsolete and has pretty much been replaced with SATA (Serial ATA). Sata is much faster than PATA and has progressed from the original SATA 1.0 standard right upto SATA 3.0 which boasts speeds of upto 6Gbps. In almost all cases i would strongly suggest you upgrade to SATA and pick a SATA hard drive if you haven't done so already as the speed difference is very much noticeable.
Another thing to consider is whether to go with an external hard drive or internal one. External hard drives sit on the outside of you computer and normally connect via a USB 2.0 connection. Where as internal hard drives are installed inside your computer either via IDE or a SATA cable. SATA is alot faster that IDE by the way and should be your choice if you go with an internal drive. As said already external hard drives are normally USB and the good thing about external hard drives is that they are extremely easy to install. Just plug into a USB port and your ready to roll. Unlike internal hard drives where you have to pull out your screwdriver and open your case, select an empty bay, screw it in, plug in the sata etc. Can be a daunting task for anyone who's never even looked inside a PC before. Something you should think about when deciding between the two.
The last not but least matter to think about before purchasing is which brand to go with. There are a few popular brand names to choose from. All of which are respected companies. As of now there are three companies that i would mention for your consideration. Seagate, western digital and hitachi. All of these three have there pros and cons and each have a unique quality better than the other. For instance Seagate hard drives are considered to be the best and most reliable but they're also the dearest. Western digital hard drives are known to make the fastest hard drives what with their raptor range but they aren't as reliable as Seagate and Hitachi hard drives are good all round but there isn't many to choose from as not many stores stock them.
I hope this information helps in your decision on purchasing a cheap hard drive.