Hard Drive Price and Capacity
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http://live.pirillo.com/ – How fast is your hard drive? Is speed everything? YES! IT! IS! One viewer wrote in to ask why he found a 500GB hard drive for a much cheaper price than a 250GB drive. Remember, the size is not all that matters.
Are you comparing apples to apples? Or is it apples to kiwi? No matter. The fact is, you have to make sure you are comparing drives that are actually similar. There are many things to look at when choosing a new hard drive. You have to consider write speed, read speed, Revolutions per Minute (or RPMs), and even benchmarks. Research, compare, and research again! A hard drive isn’t only about capacity, it’s also about connectivity options. Every model and brand is going to differ. What exactly is it you are looking for as far as performance? Compare several brands side by side. Look at those benchmarks, read as many reviews as you can possibly get your hands on.
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2 Comments
Ewen
September 4th, 2007
at 1:23am
The first question that one should ask concerning ANY computer hardware is “what are you going to do with it?” – even well before researching it. If you can’t figure out what you’re going to do with it and how you’re going to use it, then even if you had it, other than monetary loss (at that point in time), it still hasn’t otherwise accomplished anything.
Speed MAY or MAY NOT be necessarily everything. For example, if you’re setting up a home streaming server, you will only be able to moving so much data at any given point in time. More than likely, it will remain at less than 4 MB/s (for native, uncompressed DVD), which would then depend on your ability to move the data fast enough (network connection). Therefore, a slower 5,400 rpm hard drive that can sustain 20 MB/s read is plenty sufficient.
However, if (for example) in my case, where I’m moving 50 GB of data at any given time, over 16 separate drives, then absolutely I want to be able to take advantage of a 7,200 rpm hard drive to minimize the delays, limited only by the gigabit network connection.
Another possible explanation why a faster and/or bigger hard drive is cheaper than a slower and/or smaller hard drive is because of the unit volume production. It is entirely possible that the cost of volume economics will suppress the cost of faster larger hard drives vs. smaller, slower ones.
One final note to mention that the author fails to mention – if at all possible, try and find out what businesses and enterprises are putting their money when it comes to hard drives. Way I figure, if it’s good enough for an entire company to build a server or to put all of their data on one brand of hard drive, it had to be good enough for me. (Example: Sun Fire X4600, feature 48 Hitachi hard drives for 24 terabytes of storage.)
Ewen
September 4th, 2007
at 1:23am
The first question that one should ask concerning ANY computer hardware is “what are you going to do with it?” – even well before researching it. If you can’t figure out what you’re going to do with it and how you’re going to use it, then even if you had it, other than monetary loss (at that point in time), it still hasn’t otherwise accomplished anything.
Speed MAY or MAY NOT be necessarily everything. For example, if you’re setting up a home streaming server, you will only be able to moving so much data at any given point in time. More than likely, it will remain at less than 4 MB/s (for native, uncompressed DVD), which would then depend on your ability to move the data fast enough (network connection). Therefore, a slower 5,400 rpm hard drive that can sustain 20 MB/s read is plenty sufficient.
However, if (for example) in my case, where I’m moving 50 GB of data at any given time, over 16 separate drives, then absolutely I want to be able to take advantage of a 7,200 rpm hard drive to minimize the delays, limited only by the gigabit network connection.
Another possible explanation why a faster and/or bigger hard drive is cheaper than a slower and/or smaller hard drive is because of the unit volume production. It is entirely possible that the cost of volume economics will suppress the cost of faster larger hard drives vs. smaller, slower ones.
One final note to mention that the author fails to mention – if at all possible, try and find out what businesses and enterprises are putting their money when it comes to hard drives. Way I figure, if it’s good enough for an entire company to build a server or to put all of their data on one brand of hard drive, it had to be good enough for me. (Example: Sun Fire X4600, feature 48 Hitachi hard drives for 24 terabytes of storage.)