What kind of hard drive should I get?
Computer technology changes almost daily. To keep up with the technology is a full time job. To advice someone on what type of computer to get, is an impossible task. Everyone's needs are different. Everyone's preferences is different. Therefore, these pages are for your information to make an educated decision. There is so much information that it may confuse you more than help you. However it is important to review all the information. Also as technology changes, some of the information provided here may not apply.
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Hardware questions Information on computer parts.
Hard drives come in different sizes. The size requirements increase as the size of the software increases. At the moment, I wouldn't recommend a drive smaller than 40 gigs.
Some things to consider
TV recording, movie recording, and music downloads consumes hard drive space. You can fill up an 800 gig hard drive quick with TV and movie recordings. Music downloads don't take up as much space but can consume hard drive space.
If you do record TV recordings or movies, you may want a second drive to save them too so your drive C will not get full and slow the system down. You may also want to burn them to a CD to conserve hard drive space.
If you are storing your files on the main drive with your operating system and you feel you will want to replace your drive for a larger hard drive down the road, it will be a good idea to get the larger drive from the start. When you go to replace the drive, you will have to save your files to transfer them to the other drive. When you do this, you always stand a chance of forgetting a file that you need and therefore do not have access to it (unless you put the old drive back in). If you keep your files on a different drive then this is not an issue. You can just put a new drive in.
My suggestion is to have two external hard drives. Keep all your important files on one external hard drive, and use the other external drive to back up the other external hard drive. This way if your first external hard drive dies, you have it on the second one, or if the second one dies, you have it on the first external drive. This will free your c drive that has your operating system from having important files. If your operating system gets corrupted and you need to reinstall, just unplug the external drives, reinstall the operating system, reinstall any programs you want, plug the external drives back in and your up and running. For more information on the size of hard drive, click here.
For more information on hard drives, click here.