Things Must Be Remember In Buying A Hard Disk Drive- Internal and External Hard Disk Gadget Tips

Modern Hard Disk Drives replaces traditional Tape Drives. We will discuss many Parameters and tips for choosing best storage media gadgets on the basis of two categories - Internal HDD and External HDD.Today HDD stores millions of pictures,songs and movies.So read carefully for reviewing a storage media

Parameters to be taken in buying an HDD

• Physical Size

• Capacity(Storage)

• Raid

• Data Security,Safety and Back up

• Connector Technology

• Physical Layer Protection

• Data Transfer Speed

• Cache/Buffer Size

• HDD VS SSD

• Warranty Customer service

Physical Size

Basically internal hard disk comes in size of 3.5 inch and these hard drives are used in desktop computers and they sometimes called as fixed disks.These drives have moving plates so due to moving parts they produce noise a lot.Due to fixed in nature the probability for failure is very low.

Now we talk about external or portable drives physical size -these drives comes in size of 2.5 inch.these drives are used for notebook/laptops.External Drives produce less noise as compared to internal.

Capacity(Storage)

In choosing a best storage media we first know about storage capacity needed according to our requirements.Basically internal media comes up to 8 TB (4 TB * 2) means connecting two 4 TB drives in one case.500 GB to 2 TB are very common today

NOTE(internal/external): Less storage , Less probability of failure and High storage , high probability of failure of the drive.If u have sensitive and very important data then i will suggest you that buying four 1 TB drives then the buying one 4 TB drive.You can use these four 1 TB drives as a 4 TB drive using RAID technology. we will discuss RAID in next paragraph.

Now we talk about external disk , today these disks comes up to 3 TB and due to portability or pocket size these are popular these days.In this also i suggest for buying small size capacity disks as compared to a whole one and also suggests use raid technology for making these drives as a whole disks.

Raid

Raid stand for Redundant array of independent disks.This technology is very popular today for making small disks as a whole one and used by every company for securing , backing up and increasing bandwidth capacity for their important data.

Raid 1,Raid 0,Raid 10 are very common

• Raid 1:It is also called Mirroring and requires at least two drives are required.Its one advantage is that if any drive is damaged or malfunction then there will be no effect on another drive and its one disadvantage is that only one drive bandwidth or capacity will be used no matters how much storage media you used
• Raid 0:It requires at least two drives its advantage is that it combines all drives bandwidth in to one which eliminates the drawback of Raid 1 but it has one drawback also that if any drive malfunctions then the all drives will be crashed
• Raid 10:By combining Raid 0,Raid 1 results Raid 10.Raid 10 eliminates raid 0 and raid 1 drawbacks.It combines all drives bandwidth into one and there is no effect on any drive if one drive will be crashed.This technology requires at least 4 HDD 

Note:Raid of internal drives are very complex then raid of external.I will suggest you to use raid 10

Data Security ,Safety and Back up

Various manufactures like WD provides hardware encryption and software encryption for secure access for the data.Check whether manufacture provides these encryption standards or not.

Hardware encryption is best standard than the software encryption

Now what about data safety parameter?Check online reviews that describes a manufacture's drive failure rate.

Back up is the main parameter for choosing best hard disk.Check whether the manufacture provides back up feature or not and also check for cloud back up.Various manufactures like WD provides cloud back up with their drives.

Connector Technology

Modern drives are comes with many connectors like Thunderbolt,eSATA,USB,SATA .SATA comes in internal drives or laptop drives and USB interface comes in external or portable drives and Thunderbolt is used in external drives for faster accessing of graphics data and eSATA is updated version of SATA.

So you have to check only USB and SATA interface so check USB interface version and SATA version.USB 3.0 is much better than the USB 2.0 in terms of speed in external disks and eSATA is better than the SATA in terms of speed in internal disks

Physical Layer Protection

Physical layer protection is very necessary parameter for choosing best and reliable HDD.This protection is helpful in data loss due to physical damage

Physical layer protection is very necessary in external disks as compared to internal because due to portability nature these disks have high probability for physical damage

Data Transfer Speed

Data transfer means reading and writing of data on drive.Data transfer speed depends on speed of moving plate of the disk that is measured in RPM. 5400 RPM and 7200 RPM hard disks are very common.7200 RPM drive is much speedy than the 5400 RPM drive.

SO do not forget to check the speed of plates. 

Cache/buffer size

These memory are very fast.If cache memory is large than the speed of HDD is also fast.HDD comes with cache from range 3 MB to 128 MB

HDD VS SSD

HDD stands for hard disk drive and SSD stands for solid state drive.

HDD: It comes with moving parts and less expensive,slower and bigger than the SSD. These are also called as spinning disks.Due to moving parts they produce noise a lot than SSD. SSD: It is a flash memory with moving parts and consumes less power so it increases battery life of laptops.They are very expensive and very reliable.

Warranty and Customer Service

Check warranty period given by the manufactures and customer reviews about customer service published on e-commerce websites like Amazon and also compare costs on these websites.

For avoiding data loss from physical damage i will suggest to use a hard disk pouch/cover as shown in fig. 

  

 

So be careful in buying a hard disk drive and taking precautions for avoiding these gadgets from physical damage.I am new blogging if you like these tips and suggestion about HDD then please comment for motivating me.