what do the diffrent speeds mean when describing a hard drive? (i.e. 7200 rpm vs. 54oo rpm)?
479047
The faster the disk turns the less time waiting for disk to turn to where data is waiting. With an external drive it may not be as important as the throughput could be limited by the interface used.
908986
With the small speed difference, I'd go with the slower proc and use the savings to invest in more memory which will have a bigger impact on system performance.  If you've already topped out on memory, go with a faster hard drive, like SATA II (300) perpendicular recording drives.
1007509
SATA has higher maximum data transfer rates (150Mbps-SATA I, or 300Mbps-SATA II) than IDE (133Mbps) but the disk drives themselves use the same technology, with drives running from 5400RPM to 7200RPM and a few running at 10000RPM.
530974
Imagine your PC's hard drive is much like a 33 rpm record on a turn-table. Instead of grooves that create music, the PC drive contains invisible chunks of information, read by a "needle" that actually is like a wand, that rests just above the disc (about a human hair's width). This disc, spinning at hundreds of RPM's a minute, is working that wand back and forth, finding those chunks of information and putting them in order.\n\nNow, defragging is the task of organizing those chunks into neat tracks and sectors on the hard drive, making it less an effort for the "wand" or read/write head to find the information on the PC hard drive.  Defragging should be done every 2 weeks or so, to help speed the PC up.
638431
1GB = 1024 MB\n1MB = 1024 KB\n\nso advertised hard drive capacity is not the true capacity due to this factor.\n\nWhen you format the HDD, it's partition (FAT/NTFS) strucure itself requires a space.\n\n\nAlso, when files are stored & creates in hard drive, it's saved as "clusters" which usually takes more space than actual size.\n\nThink of putting books in a box.  The books will not completely fill the box, leaving some spaces & gaps.  Same with harddrive.
913459
Hard drives:\n  Size is nice, but there are a few differences.\n\nLook at the rpm speed of a hard drive.  Some are 5400 rpm, some are 7400, some are 10,000 rpm.  The higher the rpm, the faster the disks spin.  \n\nAlso look at the amount of cache on a hard drive.  Cache determines (more or less) how much can be moved around at a time.  Say for example a hard drive has 8 megabytes of cache, that means when you move files around, its doing so 8 megs at a time.  If you have a hard drive with 16 megs of cache, your files are moving at 16 megs which is double that of an 8meg cahce hard drive, and pretty much double the speed (in theory).\n\nRam/memory:\n\nAnother thing to watch out for is not only the size (amount) of memory you have, but also the speed.  Say for example your motherboard can support pc2100, pc2700 and pc3200 ram....with 2100 being the slowest and 3200 being the fastest.  It may be cool to have 2 gigabytes of ram, but check the speed.  I would personally rather have 512 megs or 1 gig of faster memory, than twice that of slower memory.\n\nThink of ram like being the size of your desk.  The more you have, the larger the desk.  At the same time though, think of the different speeds as that of the desk ahving a smoother surface that lets you slide your projects around.  Say you have a large desk and are working on project A and want to take a break and work on Project B for awhile before switching to project A again, when you switch to each project and drag the projects to the side, do you want them to snag and strain while pulling/pushing them?\n\nGraphics card:\n\nThis may be an issue too.  While standard onboard video is fine for most folks, if you are going to play games or use memory intesive apps, you may want a better video card.  Also note that the amount of ram on a video card doesnt necessarily mean you will get better performance.  I can pair up an fx5200 with 256 megs ram vs a 6800 with half the memory, and the 6800 will slap the fx5200 like a redheaded stepchild.\n\nProcessor:\n\nThis is an option easily upgradeable for most, but often overlooked.  Say you are running an older pentium 3 system running around 650 mhz, you can probably score a much faster processor of the same slot (say 1 ghz, or 933 mhz) on ebay for under $20\n\nI would recommend a program called Everest which will tell you exactly what hardware you have, what socket/pins etc and go from there
236371
Typically these are "Compressed Drives" managed by some Windows/3-rd party Compression utilities.\n\nYou would observe that big files take time to get in/out of such network folders.\n\nRight click on those folders and select properties. You will find difference in their "Size" and "Size on Disk" differing..\n\n.:Fishie:.
318102
Hi, \n\nfirst of all, don't confuse DVD-ROM speed with CD-ROM speed, the notation is different.\n\nCDrom  speeds 1X, 2X, 4X etc is the number of times the drive is than the single-speed (1x) CD-ROM player.\n\n1X CDRom drive gives a data transfer rate of 150 kilobytes per second. (1x speed rating for DVDs 1.32 megabytes/s.)
913098
The rate at which CD-ROM drives can transfer data from the disc is gauged by a speed factor relative to music CDs: 1x or 1-speed which gives a data transfer rate of 150 kilobytes per second in the most common data format. By increasing the speed at which the disc is spun, data can be transferred at greater rates. For example, a CD-ROM drive that can read at 8x speed spins the disc at up to 4000 rpm (compared to the 500 rpm maximum for 1x speed), giving a transfer rate of 1.2 megabytes per second. Above 12x speed, vibration and heat can become a problem. CD-ROM drives above this speed tackle the problem in several ways. Constant angular velocity (CAV) drives spin the disc at a constant rate, leading to faster data transfer when reading from the outer parts of the disc, but slower towards the centre. 20x was thought to be the maximum speed due to mechanical constraints until Samsung Electronics introduced the SCR-3230, a 32x CD-ROM drive which uses a ball bearing system to balance the spinning disc in the drive to reduce vibration and noise. As of 2004, the fastest transfer rate commonly available is about 52x or 7.62 megabytes per second, though this is only when reading information from the outer parts of a disc. Future speed increases based simply upon spinning the disc faster are particularly limited by the strength of polycarbonate plastic used in CD manufacturing, though improvements can still be obtained by the use of multiple laser pickups as demonstrated by the Kenwood TrueX 72x which uses seven laser beams and a rotation speed of approximately 10x.\n\nCD-Recordable drives are often sold with three different speed ratings, one speed for write-once operations, one for re-write operations, and one for read-only operations. The speeds are typically listed in that order; ie a 12x/10x/32x CD drive can, CPU and media permitting, write to CD-R disks at 12x speed (1.76 megabytes/s), write to CD-RW discs at 10x speed (1.46 megabytes/s), and read from CD discs at 32x speed (4.69 megabytes/s).\n\nThe 1x speed rating for CDs (150 kilobytes/s) is not to be confused with the 1x speed rating for DVDs (1.32 megabytes/s).\n\nIdeally for writing a cd dont go for writing speeds more than 16X and for DVD dont go for writing speeds more than 12X
202576
just buy a good drive, maxtor ( now seagate ) or western digital\nmake sure the interface is the same ( it's probaly PATA and not SATA is you got a 33gb hardrive ), most all are 7200 rpm\nyour biggest problem will be weather or not your bios can handle a drive over 137Gb if you get one that big, you also did not mention your OS, and what you be foramtting the drive to ( FAT32 or NTFS ).
492318
You need a regular desktop-type hard-drive (5 1/4" wide)the regular ones are 7200 rpm, (they have slower ones and very fast & expensive ones). You have to get at least a 20 Gig size drive, but you can get them up to 200 gigs very cheap.\nSee this list...\nhttp://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/Category/category_hdd.asp
896562
512 Megabyte is Bigger Than 32 megabyte\n\nJust Like 512 is bigger than 32
765375
sata = fast\nIDE = slow.\n\n\nbecarefull thought if you get a sata drive make sure your motherboard can take it.\n\noh and sata stands for Serial ATA.\n\noh and i might add that sata are noticible faster on the propper motherboard, hey can have transfer rate of upto 2giga bits(pretty fast), IDEs dont, again you have to check what mother board you have because some do have the correct connection but you cant connect them at full speed, and as for that guy below, Sata drive are generally cheaper. because there new and IDEs are old and are becomming obsolite, jsut like new and old types of memory!!!
734293
These numbers are for Read/Write/ReWrite speed. They are usually expressed such that 1x = 150KB/s. \n\nSo 48x would be 7200 KB/s and 24x would be 3600 KB/s.\n\nBut the manufacturers usually use some trick here, the speeds listed are 'peak' performance, which you would normally only get when reading/writing on the outer edge of the disk.
917032
You will get the right answer from the vendor when you buy a new hard drive by giving the following details.\n\n1.The make and model of the motherboard and\n2.The version of Windows you are  using.\n\nAll new hard disks now come with SATA (serial ATA) connection.  The preferred speed is 7200 rpm but for laptops many people settle for lower speed of 5000 rpm since they are cheaper.\n\nOld motherboards like Socket 7 can recognize hard disks with maximum 20GB capacity in LBA mode in 2-5GB capacity running Windows 98SE. \n\nWhen you use Windows 98, disk fragmentation in partitions with only 2GB capacity can be be done faster than the larger size partitions of 3-5GB. \n\nLatest motherboards like ASUS P4V8X-X running Windows XP can read large capacity hard disks. The speed depends on the RAM. Older SD RAMs are slower but DDR RAM modules run much faster.\n\nAll external hard drives are recognized instantly by Windows XP but you have to install a driver if you are using Windows 98SE.\n\nWhen you buy a new hard disk, you must always ask for the vendor's confirmation about the compatibility by giving the version of Windows you are using and also the motherboard maker's model number. Otherwise, you may have difficulty getting the replacement.
268218
No, both hard drives are 4.3 GB. Just check for bad clusters (format it) and if they are OK you can use them
250368
Your second hard drive needs to also be an Ultra ATA hard drive (the size can be whatever you need). The hard drive controller installed in your computer will support at least two hard drives, the second one installed is called the "slave" (if you encounter that question in the install instructions). 7200 RPM is standard (the speed that the drive spins) but if you can get something faster for a decent price, that would be a good upgrade. A faster RPM means less time to retrieve data and therefore better performance. If you have a Dell, I would start with their website as the starting point to get some idea of pricing. Also, pretty much every large electronics store has these types of hard drives as they are standard upgrades.