LAPTOP HARD DRIVES
Laptop Hard Drives
are different from desktop hard drives in
their size. Obviously, there is a lot less room inside a laptop computer than in
desktops. Smaller drives use less power, produce less heat, which is very
important for laptops and notebooks that run on batteries, also they use smaller platters, (revolving discs on which data
is stored) because of that they are less prone to damage.
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Still the hard drives are extremely sensitive to the improper |
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handling, they are one of the most important and expensive parts |
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on your laptop computer. |
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So called form factor, (named for the platter size used), which |
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distinguishes between those sizes is a 1.8" and 2.5" for laptops, as |
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opposed to the 3.5" of a desktop hard drives.
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Special rugged and reliable solid state flash hard drives, form factor 1.8" are used in
commercial, science, and military applications. Most common consumer products
are hard drives - form factor 2.5", (not all laptops use them, some of
the older laptops use 3.5" laptop hard drives). And as usual - when unit gets
smaller, you can expect to pay a higher price for it. The good thing is, that
with the constantly advanced technology those differences between laptop hard
drives have become smaller as well. Today you can buy twice as big
 laptop
hard drives as you could purchase two years ago. Today there is no need to
sacrifice on storage capacity and performance, which measured in the following
main parameters:
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LAPTOP HARD DRIVES |
| Parameter |
Measurement |
Comments |
Value |
| Capacity |
GB (GigaByte) |
The bigger the better |
20-100 |
| Spindle Speed |
RPM (Revolution Per Minute) |
The faster the better |
4.200-7.200 |
| Access Time |
ms (Thousandths of a
second) |
The lesser the better |
10 and less |
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There are several kinds of
hard drives, that are used as in a laptops:
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LAPTOP HARD DRIVES |
| Type |
Definitions |
Comments |
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Internal and External |
| IDE Drives |
Integrated Drive Electronics |
Most of the needed for operation
electronics are located on the drive itself |
| EIDE Drives |
Enhanced IDE |
Transfer rate is much faster than IDE |
| SCSI |
Small Computer System Interface |
Completely separate and independent
(mostly used as external hard drives) |
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Only External |
| Type II PC Card hard drive |
PC Card Drive |
Industry standard PCMCIA type II form
factor. Hot swappable. (solid state, or "real" hard disc) |
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USB Flash Drive |
| USB Flash Drive |
Universal Serial Bus Flash Drive |
Doesn't have moving parts |
EIDE Drives have become more and more used in laptops as they have much more advantages, like higher transfer rate, RPM
and capacity. Though RPM is generally lover on laptop hard drives as this
parameter directly contributes to the level of noise, produced by revolving
plates inside of the head disk assembly.
Some laptops have removable (don't be confused with
the external HDD) hard drives that are easy to swap out. Common consumer
laptop hard drives don't last forever, they have electrical motors inside, and
even though design is significantly improved since the first HDD, from time to
time they still can fail. Typically, with a good care they would last for years,
it is possible, though, have your HDD crashed only after a few weeks in service.
Most of us considering the data, stored on our
hard drives as the most valuable thing. With that in mind it is a good
practice to have reliable external storage for backing up valuable information.
And here comes in place reliable, mobile, high capacity PC Card Hard Drive.
Which could be a solid state hard drive, hence there is no moving part inside
it, and because of that, it is much more reliable then the usual IDE or EIDE
laptop hard drives. Please note, that there are actually two kinds of PC Card
laptop hard drives, - "solid state drives", and real hard drive with moving
platters inside. Solid state laptop hard drives perform exactly as "revolving"
hard drives, but practically they are
EEPROM flash memory.
For smaller files there is another solution - you
could use so called USB Flash drive. Which is really simple to operate, just
plug-and-play, what could be easier? You don't need anything, except the drive
itself. They support Windows 98/98SE with driver installation, and run under
Windows ME/2000/XP without any additional drivers. Another common names for USB
Flash drives which could be used as laptop hard drives are: Pen Drive, USB Key,
Disk on Key, Memory Key, DiskOnKey, Easy Disk.
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