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Hard Drive – Size does matter
April 29th, 2009
Hard drives come in many forms and shapes, the most common are the 5 1/4″ and the 2 1/2″ the first appearing on desktops and the later on laptops. As of this year, the highest capacity hard drive has topped the 2TB capacity and is set to improve further as data storage technologies improve. The smallest hard drive ever made was a 0.85″ hard drive developed by Toshiba for use as if it were an SD/MMC card for data storage on a computer or mobile devices. The two forms of hard drives have stood the test of time due to the fact that flash memory has experienced such a boom prices have fallen making them a more viable storage solution for smaller needs. The speed at which these drives spin can range from 5,400 to 7,200 rpm the later of which was the long standing standard for server-type SCSI hard drives that were very expensive. Most mobile computers (laptops) come with a 5,400 rpm drive due to the sound considerations when using the device, the faster the device the louder the sound (the spinning sound or hum you hear). You can in theory use faster hard drives on mobile computers but they would reduce battery life and make it noisier defeating the overall design of the laptop.
There is also some heat issues to address for normally, the faster a hard drive spins, the hotter it gets and as you can see with servers, they have several fans cooling each and every hard drive, asides from the PSU and the CPU. Hard drives are indeed getting better each and every year and ever since the tera-byte level was surpassed the sky’s the limit. Don’t count on a tera-byte drive for today’s desktop’s though, for they still cost an arm and a leg but in time would surely get cheaper.