The main characteristics of hard drives. Tips for choosing

By purchasing a PC, users almost always pay attention to the parameters of the computing components. The choice of the hard drive is often based only on the volume indicator. This approach is absolutely wrong, because the HDD provides storage of all information and access to it. Negligent attitude to the choice of "hard drive" will make work at the computer uncomfortable. In the worst case scenario, you will then have to pay twice as much for the data recovery procedure. характеристики жестких дисков необходимо обратить пристальное внимание при выборе подобных устройств. The article will tell you about what characteristics of hard drives you need to pay close attention to when choosing such devices.

General information

The hard drive is the main storage device in the bulk of modern PCs. It records not only user data, but also OS files, utilities, programs.

That's why the choice of HDD is a serious event. After all, any computer device can easily be replaced with a similar one. The hard disk, which failed, will require not only the purchase of a new HDD, but also the reinstallation of the OS and programs.

First steps

Before you begin to study the question, you should determine what will be used for the PC in which the drive is installed. The main groups are:

• Laptop for everyday tasks.
• Powerful gaming PC.
• Office computer.
• Multimedia center.
• Long-term file storage.
• A portable drive that will not be permanently connected.

какие технические характеристики жесткого диска первостепенны. Only by determining the specific purpose of using the PC can we say which technical characteristics of the hard drive are paramount.

The size

The size (or form factor) determines the width of the device. It is measured in inches. Today, the form factor of almost all drives is 2.5 / 3.5 inches. Small ones are usually installed in laptops. Large - in full-sized PC, but no one interferes with 2.5-inch HDD to equip a computer, for this even special adapters are manufactured.

There are smaller magnetic storage devices, for example, 1, 0.85, 1.8. They are primarily used in small mobile devices and pay attention to them when selecting a HDD is not necessary.

The size of the "hard drive" determines its weight, as well as the power required by the drive for its operation. That's why external HDDs almost always include 2.5-inch devices. характеристики внешних жестких дисков - это масса и малая мощность питания, устройство должно работать от USB-разъема. After all, the main characteristics of external hard drives - it's mass and low power, the device must work from the USB-connector. If you install a 3.5-inch drive inside the mobile HDD, you will have to organize a separate power supply, which will need to be plugged into the outlet for proper operation of the device.

Capacity

Capacity is an HDD parameter that determines how much information can not be stored simultaneously. характеристики жестких дисков ноутбуков или ПК. It can not be left aside, describing the characteristics of hard drives of laptops or PCs. Photo, games, software, music, movies - all this requires an impressive "weight", and from year to year their requests to capacity only grow. For example, modern games or high-resolution video files can occupy more than 30 GB. The capacity of 2.5-inch drives today by average standards is from 150 GB to 2 TB. 3.5-inch devices can store 3-5 TB of information on themselves.

1 GB on a larger HDD will be cheaper. Of course, this should not push the consumer to purchase a device with a capacity of 1 TB, if half of it is enough. However, one must understand that buying a hard disk that can store less than 500 GB is not practical today. Savings will be small (200-500 rubles.), But the price of one gigabyte will be impressive.

Geometry

Choosing HDD, you should not focus only on its volume. включают в себя многие немаловажные параметры. The characteristics of external hard drives and internal include many important parameters. Geometry is one of them. It describes the number of plates and the density of recording on them. Geometry affects both the capacity of the HDD and the speed of operation with it.

Writing data in "hard drives" is done on disks (plates) made of aluminum or glass. They are covered by a ferromagnetic film. Reading or writing is done by the heads located on the brackets. Between the plate and the head there is always a gap of several nanometers. Each disc is divided into a large number of radial tracks, which are divided into sectors. In this scheme, the radius of the plates influences the access time and the speed of reading the data.

At the edge where the tracks are longer, the reading speed is higher, since in a single revolution the head passes a larger number of sectors. характеристики жестких дисков размера 2,5 всегда уступают 3,5-дюймовым образцам. Therefore, the characteristics of 2.5-size hard drives are always inferior to 3.5-inch samples. HDD can contain more than one plate. The recording density is characterized by the above-described parameters. The value determines how much information is placed on each track.

The total capacity of the HDD is equal to the sum of the capacities on each disk. The first "hard drive" of 1 TB included five plates. However, technologies are developing. Hitachi жесткие диски, характеристики которых позволяют использовать их в серверах, оборудуются сверхсовременными пластинами. Hitachi's hard drives, the characteristics of which allow them to be used in servers, are equipped with ultra-modern plates. The capacity of each is approximately one gigabyte.

Today, the market of components offers drives with a wide variety of magnetic disks and a record density. If you need the most efficient HDD, it's best to pay attention to devices with a small number of plates.

I must say that the stores are unlikely to give the buyer information on the density of the record. On official websites of hard disk manufacturers this parameter is also not always covered. And yet during the selection it is recommended to learn about these parameters of specific models more.

Spindle rotation speed

The speed of writing and reading depends, in addition to density, on the speed of rotation of the spindle. Aluminum wheels are mounted on the spindle - inner axle. The spindle and plates rotate simultaneously, as a single system. The more speed it makes per unit of time, the faster under the head will be the necessary sector.

For home PCs, hard drives with a rotation speed of 5-10 thousand rpm are produced. The lower this value, the less heat is released during the operation of the drive. The same parameter also affects the necessary power for the normal operation of the device. Basically, home computers and laptops are installed drives with a rotation speed of 5400 revolutions per minute. The same HDDs are most preferable for equipping them with multimedia centers and other devices, for which the speed of data reading, and the low level of heat generation and energy consumption, is the first place.

The speed of 10,000 revolutions per minute or more is considered excessive. Such drives are rarely built into home appliances, primarily because they are very noisy. If you need very fast access to data, it is better to pay attention to the SSD.

Interface

жесткий диск Sata, характеристики его абсолютно не влияют на эту возможность. To any motherboard of a modern PC or laptop can be connected to a hard drive Sata, its characteristics absolutely do not affect this possibility. If your car is more than ten years old, it probably requires a drive with an IDE interface. Find a similar device in the store is almost unrealistic, because their release is terminated.

SATA is represented by two standards with backwards compatibility - SATA2 and SATA3. The information exchange on the first presented interface at the maximum speed is about 3 Gb / s. On the second - 6 Gb / s. In addition, SATA3 has improved power management features.

, работающего через SATA2, "за глаза" покрывают потребности среднестатистического пользователя. The main characteristics of the hard drive , working through SATA2, "by the eyes" cover the needs of the average user. The speed of reading data from the surface of the plate hardly reaches the threshold value provided by the bus.

Cache

A buffer, or cache, is an intermediate storage device. It is necessary because the reading speed differs from the recording speed. Also, PC devices that have requested information from the HDD can not always access it instantly, or after a while they will require it again. Such data will also remain in the hard disk cache for some time. At the same time, the downtime of the computational elements is reduced, but the load on the plates decreases.

Cache HDD for desktop computers and laptops varies between 8-128 MB. "Winchesters" for laptops in most are equipped with a memory of 8-16 MB. PCs are basically equipped with drives with a buffer of 32-64 MB.

жесткий диск HDD, характеристики которого лучше, должен работать быстрее конкурентов. "On paper" HDD HDD, the characteristics of which is better, should work faster than competitors. In practice, this is not always true. For example, the hard disk buffer is almost not used during the recording of large files. In addition, the performance of the buffer affects the software, "wired" to the controller, installed on the HDD. Therefore, it is not necessary to chase hard disks with a huge amount of cache. It will be more correct to compare the specific read and write speeds of certain sample drives.

MTBF

характеристики жестких дисков, нельзя не сказать о MTBF. Describing the characteristics of hard drives, we can not say about MTBF. This abbreviation is the designation of the HDD reliability index. Its decoding is mean time beatween failures. In Russian, this parameter is called the operating time for failure. It indicates how many hours the magnetic storage can continue to work until the first repair. This feature is extremely important for server hardware or a drive that is installed in a long-term file store. Typically, HDDs created specifically for this purpose, on average, have an MTBF of 900,000 or 1 million hours. характеристика жесткого диска Seagate серии Constellation как раз приблизительно сравнима с приведенными выше цифрами. For example, this characteristic of the Seagate hard drive of the Constellation series is approximately comparable to the figures given above.

Random access time

This parameter determines how much time the head requires to move to any part of the track. Measure the characteristic in thousandths of a second. Access time is one of the most important parameters of HDD. Average performance directly depends on it.

Less time allows you to perform basic operations faster. Heads of server models of drives are positioned for 2-14 ms. This parameter of hard drives for home appliances is usually 7-14 ms.

Noise level

No modern electronic device can work absolutely noiselessly. Hard disks, in addition to electronic components, include rotating plates, a spindle, reading heads. The presence of such a large number of moving elements makes the HDD one of the most noisy PC devices. Inferior to the "hard drive" for this indicator only the fans of the cooling system.

The noise is measured in decibels. The slower the spindle rotates, the fewer extraneous sounds appear during the operation of the device. The 26 dB rating is considered quite low. It is impossible to find a very quiet and very productive device at the same time. Always have to compromise and choose the HDD by the characteristic that is most important.

Energy consumption

напрямую влияют на потреблении энергии устройством. The characteristics of hard drives directly affect the power consumption of the device. The most strictly necessary to study the level of power consumption of those HDD, which will later be installed in laptops. The higher this figure, the less the laptop can work from the battery.

In addition to the above, the energy consumed by the "hard drive" during the recording or reading is converted into heat. That's why energy-intensive drives should not be equipped with PCs, in which it will be impossible later to install additional cooling elements.

Of course, the values of the described parameter can be easily found on the manufacturer's Internet resources, but they are not always trusted. It is best to search the web for information from independent testers.

SSHD

SSHD is not quite an ordinary hard drive. They harmoniously combine the advantages of magnetic storage devices and solid state drives. In this case, the latter are used as an additional buffer. Thus, the speed of reading or writing increases, and the price for gigabytes remains almost at the same level.

Although SSHD technology is quite promising, the computer hardware market offers a small number of such devices. In general, their size is 2.5-inches, and using such drives in desktop PCs is not always advisable.

скорости которых намного выше, чем у классических HDD. The most easy to find hard drives are Toshiba, the performance of which is much higher than that of the classic HDD. After all, the files used by the operating system are already in a non-volatile cache, which means that the computer is turned on and the main programs are downloaded very quickly.