Hard Drive Upgrades

One possible cause of a slow running computer is a full hard drive.

This is a relatively simple upgrade if done properly. Sometimes this is all that’s needed to improve the performance of your computer and increase its lifespan.

So what is your computers hard disk?

Also known as a hard drive, it’s the part of your computer that stores everything from photos and emails, to the installed software programs. Most hard drives are made up of one or more parts called platters which look a bit like thick, solid CDs. The platters spin around thousands of times every minute. The faster the hard drive spins, the better it performs. The hard disks are read and written to by the drive heads, which look a bit like old record player arms, except that they rapidly move back and forth, not just in one direction. Some new computers are being made with solid state hard drives that don’t have spinning platters. These are technically better, but of course they’re much more expensive and not appropriate for most PCs.

The bigger the hard drive’s capacity the better it is for most people.

This is a general rule of thumb and there are some circumstances where multiple smaller hard drives may be more appropriate. Regardless, the more hard drive space you have, the more you can save on your computer.

But there’s more to it than just having a large hard drive.

Maybe it’s more appropriate for you to have more than one hard drive. Maybe you should have a mirrored hard drive setup or even multiple hard drives. Maybe you need a RAID setup (Rendundant Array of Inexpensive Disks). How does this affect the speed or performance of your computer? Simply your computer will shuffle your files around as it needs to, so that it can find a place to save them to make things more efficient.

The more space your computer has to shuffle your data around, the better off it is. Also, the more hard drives your computer has, potentially the faster and safer your computer is. Imagine a regular three drawer business filing cabinet. The more full it becomes, the more difficult it is to store additional documents, especially when you’ve set it up in a certain order eg. alphabetically.. Your computer hard drive is the same, except the computer will split that document, sometimes into many, many pieces and put it all over your hard disk, resulting in extra time needed to find and retrieve that document next time. If your computer has lots of space that’s not such a big problem, but a full hard drive makes a computer very slow, especially if the computer needs a RAM (or Random Access Memory) upgrade too.

Unfortunately many companies and people who sell computers don't put large enough hard drives in them. Sometimes this can even mean that you might need to throw out your hard drive in order to upgrade it.

What kind of hard drive should you use?

There are several different types of hard drives available. The design of your computer determines the type of hard drive you need to use. It's very easy to buy the wrong type of hard drive and find that it won't fit in, or that it fits but it's not compatible with your computer.

So if your computer is running out of space to store music, photos and other stuff and you don't know the difference between SCSI, SATA, PATA and SAS, Gigabytes and Terrabytes, or whether you want one hard drive, two or even more, then call us and we'll help you upgrade your hard drive and you'll have the peace of mind that you're getting the upgrade most suitable for your PC and your budget.