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BUYING GUIDES - Buying Storeage

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Storage Harddiscs (IDE) Harddiscs (SCSI) Removable drives CDRW Buying Guide

Buying Storage? Introduction Hard Drives - many people confuse memory with storage. Memory is the "workspace" where the CPU holds information that it's working with it. Memory is volatile, meaning that all information in memory is lost when you turn your computer off. Storage, on the other hand, is non-volatile. You use storage to hold the information that you want to keep from session to session. The hard drive, or hard disk, is typically the most common form of storage used. It is called a "hard drive" because it is constructed of a number of metal disks. It is occasionally referred to as a "fixed disk" because it is built into your system. Size is the most important factor in selecting your hard drive. Most new computers come with at least one Gigabyte (or Gig, in the vernacular) of hard disk storage space. A Gig is approximately one billion bytes. This is roughly equivalent to 192,000 pages of text. Although this sounds like a huge amount of storage, it will fill up much more quickly than you may expect. Current features and graphics in most programs can use a large portion of your hard drive storage. A good rule of thumb is to decide how much hard drive storage you think you'll need, and double that amount. On a new PC, you should consider a minimum of 1.2 Gigabytes of storage space, and choose around 2 Gigs if you want to leave room to grow. The good news is that in the last few years hard drive prices have dropped and capacities have increased dramatically. A second issue in choosing a hard drive is the hard drive interface. The interface is the way the hard drive communicates with the rest of the system. In an effort to create larger, faster hard drives, several different standards have emerged. The most common standards in today's systems are Enhanced IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics) or EIDE and SCSI (pronounced "scuzzy"). The EIDE interface is the most popular today because it offers nearly the same performance as SCSI at a lower price. Most modern motherboards have two EIDE controllers, each with the capability of supporting two devices. This means most systems can support up to four EIDE hard drives or CD-ROMs. SCSI (Small Computer System Interface) devices are slightly more expensive than EIDE devices but provide you with many more options. Up to seven SCSI devices can be connected to the SCSI interface, allowing much more room for future expansion. In addition, most scanners, backup tape drives, cartridge drives and writable CD-ROMs use the SCSI interface. If you plan to add any of these components now or in the future, the SCSI interface is your best bet. Next