Find the right storage using our helpful
guide!
When building a PC, it’s important to find
the right storage method for your needs. It isn’t just a question of cost, but
of speed, capacity, security, portability and maybe even more specific
requirements like size and power. In this guide, we’ll help you find out which
storage method is right for you and recommend some products for buyers with any
size budgets!
Internal HDDs
The internal hard drive has been the main
data storage component in home computers for as long as many of us can
remember. It’s not difficult to see where such endurance comes from. Mechanical
hard drives are cheap, reasonably fast, have substantially higher capacities
than most storage methods, and can remain functional for years without any
significant errors.
However, they’re not quite the undisputed
kings of the storage industry any more. While there’s no question that for most
buyers, an internal hard drive will be the first and best choice, the
technology is beginning to show its age. Internal hard drives are slower than
SSDs and memory sticks, less portable than USB storage methods, and they’re
noisy and cumbersome to install.
Despite those drawbacks, internal hard
drives remain the storage of choice for most users, due to their generally high
performance and comparatively low price, not to mention familiarity. Whatever
you want to use your PC for, you can be certain that an internal hard drive
will do any job you throw at it to reasonably high standards, and that type of
breadth is hard to beat.
Good
for:
Budget and general use PCs.
Bad
for:
Performance/gaming PCs.
Performance Choice: 1TB Western Digital VelociRaptor SATA
6Gbps 10,000rpm 64MB cache
You might think it’s odd that the high-end
choice has the same capacity as the budget version, but it’s not the size of
the drive that’s worth paying attention to; it’s the speed of it. Western
Digital is Seagate’s only realistic competition in the fight to be the best HDD
manufacturer, and the VelociRaptor’s 10,000rpm platter speed shows why. If you
want to see extra performance from a mechanical hard drive, you need a higher
RPM, and the specs on this drive mean it’s better than most.
External
HDDs
External hard drives may just be a standard
mechanical HDD in a box, but they also have their own benefits. Not only do
they have all of the capacity and price benefits of normal hard drives, they’re
also vastly easier to transport around. If you have a laptop that you want to
keep free of clutter, or if you want to make backups of large files, which can
be stored away from the originals, an external hard drive is likely to be your
best bet.
That said, there are downsides to using an
external hard drive rather than an internal one. Transfer speeds to external
hard drives are generally worse than internal ones - not so much for USB 3.0
devices, but if there’s a USB 2.0 port at either end, it’ll be a bottleneck.
They’ll likely require a separate power source, which means an extra plug taken
up and an extra cable to carry around. And their portable nature means they’re
a little more prone to damage and data loss than internal drives, purely
because they spend more time being moved around and powered up and down.
Best
for
Portable storage and backups.
Bad
for
Performance/gaming PCs.
Performance Choice: 2TB Seagate Expansion hard drive
2TB of storage space make this capable of
storing more than enough files to keep you going in the event of a disaster,
but it’s the speed of the unit that really impresses. As an external hard drive
with a USB 3.0 connection, it’s up to ten times faster than its USB 2.0
cousins. It’s not much to look at, but performance builders will find it tough
to ignore the high transfer rates and the fact that it has Seagate’s reputation
all over it.
SSDs
Solid-state drives are becoming more and
more popular at the same time as becoming less and less expensive. Now more
than ever they’re an attractive accessory for any computer owner, and the
storage medium of choice for the performance enthusiast. Compared to standard
hard drives, they have faster access times, make much less noise, run at lower
temperatures and have lower power requirements than mechanical hard disks.
Enough to make anyone with an eye on system quality want one.
The drawbacks are potentially large,
however. If you’re on a budget, their high cost means you could end up with a
unit that is prohibitively small. The largest SSDs, costing hundreds of pounds,
are roughly the same capacity as the smallest mechanical HDDs.
While their low disk access times mean they
make good primary drives and can improve system performance in a variety of
areas, and their low power, low noise, low temperature attributes makes them
excellent for portable computing, there’s no getting away from the fact that
SSDs are a staggeringly poor choice if you need lots of storage.
Good
for
High-end gaming machines,
portable/low-power PCs.
Bad
for
File servers and archival purposes.
Performance Choice: 240GB OCZ Vertex 3
The OCZ Vertex 3 builds on OCZ’s
reputation, and while you can get higher capacity drives, 240GB should mean
that won’t have to worry about running out of space any time soon. Even better,
the OCZ Vertex 3 is one of the fastest solid-state drives available, capable of
reaching almost the top speeds afforded by SATA 6Gbps in sequential reading
tests. It won’t be especially noticeable compared to other SSDs (certainly not
as noticeable as the difference between a traditional hard disk and any
solid-state drive), but the superior speed is a good reason to choose the Vertex
3 over any other if you’re looking for performance.
Hybrid
HDD/SSDs
Hybrid drives are internal hard disks that
have a small solid-state component grafted onto them. The aim of manufacturers
offering such devices is to combine the high storage capacity and low costs of
mechanical hard drives with the fast access speeds of solid-state storage. It’s
fair to say that the experiment has produced mixed results.
On one hand, hybrid drives can be quicker
than HDDs without the high price of SSDs, and their ability to cache files to
the SSD portion of the storage means the most popular applications and
operating system files can be accessed at high speeds without the attendant
cost of storing, for example, music and video files on SSD.
On the other hand, hybrid drives are slower
(on average) than pure SSDs, and the limited capacity of the SSD portion can
often frustrate users and require more micro-management than is strictly
necessary. There’s no question that they’re faster than standard mechanical
hard drives, cheaper than SSDs and have the ability to store more than an SSD,
but the hybridization augments the failings of both technologies as much as the
successes.
Good for
Getting SSD-range access speeds on a
budget.
Bad for
Novices who might struggle to manage the
hybrid approach.
Performance Choice: Seagate Momentus XT 500GB HDD
Although hybrid drives sometimes struggle
to live up to expectations, Seagate’s Momentus XT drives are the best
available. Speeds are faster than a normal hard drive but cheaper than an
equivalent SSD, while the automatic caching ensures optimal performance. Priced
under $160, the 4GB of on-board SSD means the drive can be up to 80% faster
than a purely mechanical drive. However you look at it, that’s worth paying for
