How do I know what kind of hard drive I need? How to choose a hard drive: advice from professionals. Data storage disk

You will find a list of all HDDs for your PCs, sorted by the final rating obtained within the walls of the testing laboratory. Currently, desktop hard drives reach capacities of 10 TB, and 6- and 8-TB models have already dropped in price quite a lot. They are great for computers and in most cases even for NAS systems.

In the table below, we show you the always up-to-date "Top 5" 3.5-inch hard drives with a capacity of at least 6 GB. We also take a closer look at the impressive 10TB behemoth and provide an example of a more affordable alternative.

Giant Storage: 10 Terabyte Monsters

Incredible hard drive capacity for PCs and NAS: 3.5-inch 10 TB models like Seagate's IronWolf, with a price tag of around 25,000 rubles, can make a significant hole in your budget. At the same time, the high cost reduces the price-quality ratio score to average at best. Despite this, IronWolf is still one of the most affordable representatives of HDD monsters.

With its spindle speed of 7200 rpm, it has established itself as a fast hard drive. After formatting, 9315 GB of disk space remains available for use. The hard drive controller allows you to read information at an average of 200.6 MB per second, and write data at the same speed.

This hard drive is suitable for long-term use and is even marketed as a HDD for NAS systems, so we can wholeheartedly recommend IronWolf for this application.

Alternative: Toshiba X300 6TB

With a price tag of 13,700 rubles, a slightly more affordable and at the same time quite practical alternative is produced by Toshiba and is part of its X300 series. We have already tested the 6 terabyte model. During testing, it proved convincing due to its decent data transfer speeds and moderate power consumption.

In the laboratory, this hard drive demonstrated an average speed of 175 MB per second for both reading and writing data. At the same time, this model from Toshiba is not designed for NAS systems and is not suitable for continuous operation, so we recommend using the alternative option we offer only for a regular desktop computer.

Today I will tell you how to find out the number of hard drives installed on our computer. This information will be useful to us when we talk about things like data backup.

As you know, there are often several volumes on a computer. For example, C and D. But in most cases, these are two logical drives on which the only physical drive installed on the computer is allocated.

But it also happens that there are several physical drives installed on a computer, each of which can be labeled with one letter or, in turn, can be divided into several local drives.

It would seem that it makes no difference whether it is a logical disk or a physical one. For the system, everything is the same.

For the system, of course, yes, but not for you and your hardware.

For example, you have a computer that has two disks - C and D (there may be much more of them, this is not significant). If you have one physical disk installed, partitioned into two logical volumes, then if the physical drive fails, all the logical volumes into which your disk is divided will become unavailable to you.

If volumes C and D are separate physical disks, then the failure of one volume does not damage the other.

So how can you determine the number of hard drives on your computer?

Everything is very simple. Click "Start" and right-click on "Computer". In the context menu that appears, select “Management”.

The following window will open:

Here you need to select the “Disk Management” section. The display will show information about the physical drives and the logical volumes to which they are allocated. The following illustration shows an example of one hard drive divided into two logical drives. There are also two hidden sections intended for system needs.

And here we see two hard drives at once:

Now you know how to determine the number of hard drives on your computer. If you are ready to move on, follow the publications.

So it is in a constant way.

Naturally, the ability to save this or that amount of information depends on the storage capacity. In this article we will talk about a relatively simple and logical, but for many, rather ambiguous characteristics of the capacity (volume) of a hard drive. Namely, what size hard drive should you choose for your system.

The volume (capacity) of a hard drive is an indicator of the maximum amount of information that your hard drive can hold. Currently, hard drives with capacities ranging from 80 GB to 4000 GB (4 TB) are common.

Let's look at what is the current maximum and optimal storage capacity of the average home system among the drives presented in stores.

If you quickly analyze the drives presented in several online computer hardware stores, you can clearly see that the maximum is somewhere around a capacity of 3-4 TB. The cost of such pleasure is on average $300-400. It cannot be said that such large hard drives will appeal to a wide range of users, due to their not very friendly price. And why does the average user need a 4 TB hard drive? For vacation photos?

In general, we come to the conclusion that such a capacity will be superfluous and is needed only for specific requirements. Still, it cannot be denied that there are fans of rather strange collecting films of 10-30 GB. Or those who actually need to store sources, for example, uncompressed video clips after editing. If you take the Adobe After Effects program, then the finished file after rendering A 3-minute video on a standard codec (in AVI format) can take up about 50 GB. So for fans of uncompressed video files, you may even need RAID array from several such hard drives.

Let's return to the analysis of the capacity of drives presented in online stores and see that the most popular class (as we know, demand creates supply) are drives with sizes of 500 GB - 1 TB.

As for me, for a typical home system, 500 GB is more than enough. This is the case if you do not have the above-described passion for collecting films on your hard drive. In any case, the full package of installed programs will take you no more than 60 GB. Music will most likely “float” in the range of 10-40 GB. You can also allocate about 50 GB for photographs and home videos; if you shoot a lot, then 100-150 is possible. Also, about 70-90 GB for games (for avid gamers) and residual files of various types. In total, after several years of active use of hard drive resources, you will only have 250 GB occupied, and the remaining 250 will simply be empty. By the way, I recommend using special software for hard drive testing in order to avoid information loss. In general, as we see, for those who are especially economical, an option with a 250 or 320 GB hard drive is suitable.

I would like to note that everything here is purely individual, but the above calculations will more than cover the needs of the average user. Before buying, you just need to think about what you will store there, but even if an error is made in these approximate calculations, then nothing prevents you from purchasing another hard drive (in the case of a desktop). In the case of a laptop, you can easily use an external drive.

These are the considerations regarding the capacity of the hard drive. As a result, the final choice of volume is, of course, yours.

This article was an introductory article to a series of articles regarding the characteristics of hard drives, the rest of which we will discuss in detail in subsequent articles.

Good afternoon, dear readers! 🙂

I think it would be useful for you and me to consider this question, which concerns the choice of a hard drive, or rather, to talk about their volumes.

A seemingly simple question: “How much space do you need?” causes a huge number of problems after the wrong decision. Perhaps you don’t quite understand what I mean yet, but now I’ll explain….

HDD- a seemingly simple device designed for storing information on a computer.

However, this device has many parameters (and in order to choose the right hard drive you need to take them all into account, or contact a specialist), inattention to which leads to the biggest, without exaggeration, the most bitter and expensive problems who only meet with computers - loss of information. Data loss is the biggest problem a user can face. Data, as you know, is the highest value. These are some works that you have done over the course of months or years, a photo archive, valuable videos or text materials... Whatever! Personally, I experienced such a situation as once upon a time my HDD, which was large at that time and had a capacity of 400GB, failed irretrievably!!! All data I'm irretrievably lost- and there were a lot of them - regarding my business, work, life... I would need some things today, but this is no longer there... 🙁 This cannot be conveyed, but when this happens, you understand for the rest of your life the importance of data storage security...

Therefore, I think there is no need to explain this further to anyone, everything is already clear. This is exactly why, even if you saved on some other PC components, or chose them incorrectly, then ANYWAY when buying a PC, choosing a hard drive - IT IS MOST IMPORTANT!!! You can't save money on this! It's better if someone helps you specialist…

So, the first question in the series of articles is the size of the hard drive....

It is not enough to just roughly “estimate” how much space you need. We must again start from REQUIREMENTS to your PC and your tasks. If this is an office PC, 120-160 GB will be more than enough for the coming years.

If this is a multimedia computer, make sure that it has a HDD of at least 200-250GB. After all, multimedia is large volumes: photos, videos, just extraneous data...

A gaming computer should have a disk of at least 320GB - this is the minimum or optimal for now. But since data volumes are constantly growing rapidly, if you are building a PC with an eye to the future, it is better to take (for a gamer) a disk of 400GB or more. It will be enough for 3-4 years.

This is so - approximate estimates of what it's for... They're suitable if you don't currently have a PC and you just want to buy one. For those who have already worked with a PC:

See if you are running out of space on your old PC? Maybe it once happened that a friend brought you an amateur video from a vacation, but it was difficult for you to place this file, several GB in size, on your HDD? Take a closer look at all this, do the math... Look also at how much space is currently occupied on your hard drive(s)... Add to all this your plans for the future: Maybe you will play modern games, each of which is (modern) takes up from 5 to 10-15 gigabytes on disk? Maybe you are planning to buy a good photo or video camera later? The volumes of modern photos (about 10 MB picture in 8 megapixel resolution) and video are quite large. Add it all up and look what you get - how many gigabytes.

One more point: if you do not do this, but determine the HDD volume you “need” by eye, then in the future there may be problems such as lack of space, close to 100% HDD load. Then you will need to buy another, more capacious hard drive, install it in the PC along with this one, etc. the result is two (or several) small disks, which, among other things, create noise and are absolutely unprofitable. One capacious HDD will cost less than two (or even more so several) HDDs, the total equivalent to one capacious one.

Next, choosing the volume you need is half the battle. You also need to take care of the RELIABILITY of data storage. For example, a 500GB disk is 75% loaded - it stores your personal documents and files... HDD - can fail, the reception is irreversible, completely “out of the blue” completely and irrevocably!!! Conclusion - you need to take care of where to archive or copy “all your acquired goods” in case of a failure. Storing especially important data in a single copy and in one place is completely unacceptable!

The archiving device can be a DVD burner (if of these 75%, you want to record only the MOST VALUABLE). Or it will be another HDD. However, this is the topic of a separate article, let’s not mix everything together. Subscribe to RSS or stay tuned to be the first to read future articles!

So, I told you about how you need to select the size of your hard drive... Of course, this is not ALL that you NEED to pay attention to when purchasing, but this parameter is one of the main ones...

That's all for today! See you! 🙂

When purchasing a flash drive, many people ask the question: “how to choose the right flash drive.” Of course, choosing a flash drive is not so difficult if you know exactly for what purpose it is being purchased. In this article I will try to give a complete answer to the question posed. I decided to write only about what to look for when buying.

A flash drive (USB drive) is a drive designed for storing and transferring information. The flash drive works very simply without batteries. You just need to connect it to the USB port of your PC.

1. Flash drive interface

At the moment there are 2 interfaces: USB 2.0 and USB 3.0. If you decide to buy a flash drive, then I recommend taking a flash drive with a USB 3.0 interface. This interface was made recently, its main feature is high data transfer speed. We'll talk about speeds a little lower.

This is one of the main parameters that you need to look at first. Now flash drives from 1 GB to 256 GB are sold. The cost of a flash drive will directly depend on the amount of memory. Here you need to immediately decide for what purpose you are buying a flash drive. If you are going to store text documents on it, then 1 GB is enough. For downloading and transferring movies, music, photos, etc. you need to take the more, the better. Today, the most popular flash drives are from 8GB to 16GB.

3. Housing material

The body can be made of plastic, glass, wood, metal, etc. Most flash drives are made of plastic. I can’t give any advice here; it all depends on the buyer’s preferences.

4. Data transfer rate

Earlier I wrote that there are two standards: USB 2.0 and USB 3.0. Now I will explain how they differ. The USB 2.0 standard has read speeds of up to 18 Mbit/s and write speeds of up to 10 Mbit/s. The USB 3.0 standard has a read speed of 20-70 Mbit/s, and a write speed of 15-70 Mbit/s. Here, I think, there is no need to explain anything.

Nowadays you can find flash drives of different shapes and sizes in stores. They can be in the form of jewelry, fancy animals, etc. Here I would advise taking flash drives that have a protective cap.

6. Password protection

There are flash drives that have a password protection feature. Such protection is carried out using a program that is located in the flash drive itself. The password can be set both on the entire flash drive and on part of the data in it. Such a flash drive will primarily be useful to people who transfer corporate information to it. According to the manufacturers, if you lose it, you don’t have to worry about your data. Not so simple. If such a flash drive falls into the hands of an understanding person, then hacking it is just a matter of time.

These flash drives look very beautiful, but I would not recommend buying them. Because they are very fragile and often break in half. But if you are a neat person, then feel free to take it.

Conclusion

As you noticed, there are many nuances. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. In my opinion, the most important parameters when choosing are: the standard of the flash drive, the capacity and speed of writing and reading. And everything else: design, material, options - this is just everyone’s personal choice.

Good afternoon, my dear friends. In today's article I want to talk about how to choose the right mouse pad. When buying a rug, many people do not attach any importance to this. But as it turned out, this point needs to be given special attention, because... The mat determines one of the indicators of comfort while working at a PC. For an avid gamer, choosing a rug is a completely different story. Let's look at what types of mouse pads have been invented today.

Mat options

1. Aluminum
2. Glass
3. Plastic
4. Rubberized
5. Double sided
6. Helium

And now I would like to talk about each type in more detail.

1. First I want to consider three options at once: plastic, aluminum and glass. These rugs are very popular among gamers. For example, plastic mats are easier to find on sale. The mouse glides quickly and accurately on these mats. And most importantly, these mouse pads are suitable for both laser and optical mice. Aluminum and glass mats will be a little harder to find. Yes, and they will cost a lot. True, there is a reason for this - they will serve for a very long time. These types of rugs have minor flaws. Many people say that they rustle when operating and are a little cool to the touch, which may cause discomfort for some users.

2. Rubberized (rag) mats have soft sliding, but the accuracy of their movements is worse. For ordinary users, such a mat will be just right. And they are much cheaper than the previous ones.

3. Double-sided mouse pads, in my opinion, are a very interesting type of mouse pad. As the name suggests, these rugs have two sides. Typically, one side is high-speed and the other is high-precision. It happens that each side is designed for a specific game.

4. Helium mats have a silicone cushion. She supposedly supports the hand and relieves tension from it. For me personally, they turned out to be the most inconvenient. According to their intended purpose, they are designed for office workers, since they sit at the computer all day long. These mats are not suitable for casual users and gamers. The mouse glides very poorly on the surface of such mouse pads, and their accuracy is not the best.

Mat sizes

There are three types of rugs: large, medium and small. Here everything primarily depends on the taste of the user. But as is commonly believed, large rugs are good for games. Small and medium ones are taken mainly for work.

Rugs design

In this regard, there are no restrictions. It all depends on what you want to see on your rug. Fortunately, now they don’t draw anything on rugs. The most popular are the logos of computer games, such as Dota, Warcraft, Line, etc. But if it happened that you couldn’t find a rug with the pattern you wanted, don’t be upset. Now you can order a print on a rug. But such mats have a disadvantage: when printing is applied to the surface of the mat, its properties deteriorate. Design in exchange for quality.

This is where I want to end the article. On my own behalf, I wish you to make the right choice and be satisfied with it.
For anyone who doesn’t have a mouse or wants to replace it with another one, I advise you to look at the article:.

Microsoft's all-in-one PCs have been replenished with a new all-in-one model called Surface Studio. Microsoft recently presented its new product at an exhibition in New York.

On a note! I wrote an article a couple of weeks ago where I reviewed the Surface all-in-one. This candy bar was presented earlier. To view the article, click on.

Design

Microsoft calls its new product the world's thinnest candy bar. Weighing 9.56 kg, the thickness of the display is only 12.5 mm, the remaining dimensions are 637.35x438.9 mm. The display dimensions are 28 inches with a resolution greater than 4K (4500x3000 pixels), aspect ratio 3:2.

On a note! The display resolution of 4500x3000 pixels corresponds to 13.5 million pixels. This is 63% more than 4K resolution.

The all-in-one display itself is touch-sensitive, housed in an aluminum case. On such a display it is very convenient to draw with a stylus, which ultimately opens up new possibilities for using a candy bar. In my opinion, this candy bar model will appeal to creative people (photographers, designers, etc.).

On a note! For people in creative professions, I advise you to look at the article where I reviewed all-in-one computers with similar functionality. Click on the highlighted one: .

To everything written above, I would add that the main feature of the candy bar will be its ability to instantly turn into a tablet with a huge working surface.

On a note! By the way, Microsoft has another amazing candy bar. To find out about it, go to.

Specifications

I will present the characteristics in the form of a photograph.

From the periphery, I note the following: 4 USB ports, Mini-Display Port connector, Ethernet network port, card-reader, 3.5 mm audio jack, 1080p webcam, 2 microphones, 2.1 Dolby Audio Premium audio system, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0. The candy bar also supports Xbox wireless controllers.

Price

When purchasing an all-in-one PC, Windows 10 Creators Update will be installed on it. This system should be released in the spring of 2017. This operating system will have updated Paint, Office, etc. The price for an all-in-one PC will be from $3,000.
Dear friends, write in the comments what you think about this candy bar, ask questions. I'll be glad to chat!

OCZ demonstrated the new VX 500 SSD drives. These drives will be equipped with a Serial ATA 3.0 interface and are made in a 2.5-inch form factor.

On a note! Anyone interested in how SSD drives work and how long they last can read in an article I wrote earlier:.

The new products are made using 15-nanometer technology and will be equipped with Tochiba MLC NAND flash memory microchips. The controller in the SSD drives will be Tochiba TC 35 8790.
The VX 500 drive range will consist of 128 GB, 256 GB, 512 GB and 1 TB. According to the manufacturer, the sequential read speed will be 550 MB/s (this is for all drives in this series), but the write speed will be from 485 MB/s to 512 MB/s.

The number of input/output operations per second (IOPS) with data blocks of 4 KB in size can reach 92,000 when reading, and 65,000 when writing (this is all at random).
The thickness of OCZ VX 500 drives will be 7 mm. This will allow them to be used in ultrabooks.

The prices of the new products will be as follows: 128 GB - $64, 256 GB - $93, 512 GB - $153, 1 TB - $337. I think they will cost more in Russia.

Lenovo presented its new gaming all-in-one IdeaCentre Y910 at Gamescom 2016.

On a note! Previously, I wrote an article where I already reviewed gaming monoblocks from different manufacturers. This article can be viewed by clicking on this one.

The new product from Lenovo received a frameless display measuring 27 inches. The display resolution is 2560x1440 pixels (this is QHD format), the refresh rate is 144 Hz, and the response time is 5 ms.

The monoblock will have several configurations. The maximum configuration includes a 6th generation Intel Core i7 processor and a hard drive capacity of up to 2 TB or 256 GB. The amount of RAM is 32 GB DDR4. The graphics will be provided by an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 or GeForce GTX 1080 video card with Pascal architecture. Thanks to such a video card, it will be possible to connect a virtual reality helmet to the candy bar.
From the periphery of the candy bar, I would highlight the Harmon Kardon audio system with 5-watt speakers, the Killer DoubleShot Pro Wi-Fi module, a webcam, USB ports 2.0 and 3.0, and HDMI connectors.

In its basic version, the IdeaCentre Y910 monoblock will go on sale in September 2016 at a price of 1,800 euros. But the candy bar with the “VR-ready” version will appear in October at a price of 2,200 euros. It is known that this version will have a GeForce GTX 1070 video card.

MediaTek has decided to upgrade its Helio X30 mobile processor. So now the developers from MediaTek are designing a new mobile processor called Helio X35.

I would like to briefly talk about Helio X30. This processor has 10 cores, which are combined into 3 clusters. Helio X30 has 3 variations. The first - the most powerful - consists of Cortex-A73 cores with a frequency of up to 2.8 GHz. There are also blocks with Cortex-A53 cores with a frequency of up to 2.2 GHz and Cortex-A35 with a frequency of 2.0 GHz.

The new Helio X35 processor also has 10 cores and is created using 10-nanometer technology. The clock frequency in this processor will be much higher than that of its predecessor and ranges from 3.0 Hz. The new product will allow you to use up to 8 GB of LPDDR4 RAM. The graphics in the processor will most likely be handled by the Power VR 7XT controller.
The station itself can be seen in the photographs in the article. In them we can see storage compartments. One bay has a 3.5" jack and the other has a 2.5" jack. Thus, it will be possible to connect both a solid-state drive (SSD) and a hard drive (HDD) to the new station.

The dimensions of the Drive Dock station are 160x150x85mm, and the weight is no less than 970 grams.
Many people probably have a question about how the Drive Dock connects to a computer. I answer: this happens through the USB port 3.1 Gen 1. According to the manufacturer, the sequential read speed will be 434 MB/s, and in write mode (sequential) 406 MB/s. The new product will be compatible with Windows and Mac OS.

This device will be very useful for people who work with photo and video materials at a professional level. Drive Dock can also be used to backup files.
The price for the new device will be acceptable - it is $90.

On a note! Previously, Renduchinthala worked for Qualcomm. And since November 2015, he moved to a competing company, Intel.

In his interview, Renduchintala did not talk about mobile processors, but only said the following, I quote: “I prefer to talk less and do more.”
Thus, the Intel top manager created great intrigue with his interview. We can only wait for new announcements in the future.