Hard Drives

Hardware as I stated on the main page are the things that you can kick when your computer isn't doing what you want.  While percussive therapy (hitting your computer) may temporarily reduce your stress levels, it isn't very good for your computer.

Hard drive - This is the piece of your computer that stores your information when the power is off.  It also contains the information that makes your computer yours, your files, your operating system, your settings, etc.

The average life of a hard drive is three to five years.  Most hard drives now come with S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology) .  Not all hard drive failures are predictable, but many mechanical failures are predictable and this is where S.M.A.R.T. comes in.  S.M.A.R.T. lets you know if your hard drive is showing signs that it may fail.  If you start receiving S.M.A.R.T. errors I highly advise that you back up any critical important information and purchase a new drive.  I have seen drive with S.M.A.R.T. errors work for months, and I have seen them not boot the next time.  If your data is important replace the drive.

Belarc offers a free tool to check your hard drive fitness.  It requires that you install the Belarc software which is also free.

If you need to purchase a hard drive for additional storage I currently recommend Seagate drives.  Seagate is the only hard drive company that offers a five year warranty standard.  While the warranty will not replace or recover your data it will replace your hard drive should it fail.  Other good drives are Maxtor and Western Digital.

Currently there are two flavors of hard drives to choose from, PATA (Parallel Advanced Technology Attachment ) and SATA (Serial Advanced Technology Attachment).

PATA is the older and slower drive standard that has been around for over a decade.  PATA is also known as an IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics) or EIDE (Enhanced Integrated Drive Electronics).  IDE technology allows for two devices per cable/channel a master and a slave.  The IDE is the interface used to connect hard drives and optical drives (CDR, CDRW, DVD, etc.).  There have been two IDE channels (Primary and Secondary) on computers in the recent past allowing for a total of four drives.  There are four ways to jumper a drive, master, slave, cable select, and some drives have a single).  Master is the first drive. Normally the master on the primary IDE channel is your boot drive.  Slave is used to add a second drive to an IDE channel that already has one device attached.  Cable select is the easiest way to jumper your drives. When the drives are set as cable select their position on the cable determines whether they are master or slave. If both drives are jumpered cable select the drive in the middle of the cable is the slave and the drive at the end of the cable is the master.  Some drives have a setting for a single drive. This is used when it is the only drive on the IDE channel.  Since IDE has two channels supporting two devices you can connect a total of four devices without adding an additional IDE controller. IDE can only "talk" to one device on a channel at a time. So, if you are planning to copy from one device to another it is best if they are on separate channels.  IDE works on a 40 pin cable.

SATA does away with the master and slave setting.  You can only have one drive per connection.  The SATA drives also have a different power connection, there are adapters that you can purchase to use a standard power connection if your computer does not have an SATA power connector.  SATA is a new technology, but they are still making improvements on it.  It is capable of much high data transfer rates than PATA and the data cable is much smaller allowing for better air flow through the computer case.  Most newer computers are now coming with SATA drives.