What is the average hard drive size

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Multiple-drive cases are an excellent solution for a large archive. And once you have bought a big drive box, you can fill it with less-expensive internal drives, which you can later swap out for higher capacity drives as additional space is required.

This is the arrangement that we currently favor. This is a trayless model for SATA drives. These units provide an easy way to add more storage to your computer. The external interface determines how the drive enclosure connects to the computer. There are four principal ones in use, and a few additional ones that are used in high-end systems. Figure 6 shows a drive that has the three most common connection types. USB is the most universal connection method for adding peripheral devices to computers.

Data throughput maxes out at a theoretical 30 megabytes per second per device, in most cases. USB 3. USB connectors can supply bus power to attached devices.

FireWire devices can be daisy chained, allowing the use of multiple drives on a single port. FireWire can also offer bus power to run external drives if the FireWire port is a four-pin, six-pin or nine-pin port. Many PCs only offer four-pin ports. Conventional eSATA does not have the capability to bus-power hard drives so you must use an external power source.

The design of the host the way the eSATA is connected to the logic board will determine if the connection really is hot-swappable. In , Apple released the first computers with a built-in Thunderbolt connection.

This interface supports multiple streams of high-resolution video as well as multiple streams of fast data using the Mini DisplayPort connector. The Thunderbolt standard supports external storage devices as well as external monitors. The data connectivity of Thunderbolt is based on the same kind of PCIe connection that is used with expansion cards on tower computers — basically, it offers a direct connection to the logic board for unsurpassed speed.

At the time of this writing, Thunderbolt accessories, cables and peripherals are rare, probably due to the low supply of Thunderbolt chipsets that are needed to provide the Thunderbolt connection. Up to seven devices Including monitors in that count can be connected by daisy-chain to a Thunderbolt port. Figure 7 The Thunderbolt connection carries both video and data over a single tiny connector. An iSCSI device can be attached directly to a computer's network port, or a router or switch can connect it.

Note that iSCSI needs "initiator" software that manages the connection. Some devices, such as the DroboPro shown in Figure 8 include this software. SAS connections can be internal or external. This fast connection is found mostly on enterprise-level hardware, like dedicated servers, RAID, and tape drive mechanisms.

Fibre Channel is a technology that has migrated from supercomputers down to enterprise-level storage big companies. It offers a high throughput and the potential to be used over distances of several hundred feet. It can be used over copper cable as well as optical fiber. It is rated at up to 3.

Sometimes speed will be critically important, such as primary storage for video source files. Downloads and transfers will take too long, or Photoshop will seem to stop as you hear the hard drives grinding away. Choosing the right speed of drive and a drive connection is not terribly hard, but the specifications that are published can be misleading.

Sometimes, manufacturers will use the speed of a connection port as the listed speed of the device, when the actual drive is much slower than that. The chart in Figure 9 outlines some rough data transfer rates for drive types and for connection types. When you look at drive speed figures, you will often see two different notations that look very similar.

There are 8 bits per byte, so the relationship between the two is exactly When the b is lower case, the notation is bits, when it is capitalized, it is bytes. For instance, FireWire is named for the number of megabits that can be transferred in a second, which is about Divide that by 8 to get the number of megabytes that can be transferred in a second: Note that there is a difference between the rated speed and the typical real-world speed.

All connections provide slower actual throughput than the rated speeds — some significantly so. Check the chart in Figure 9 to get a better idea of actual speed. Hard drives are slowed down considerably when they read or write small files. Data on the outer rings of a drive platter is read faster than data on the inner rings. And as a drive fills up, things slow down even more. But you will only find that happening in rare circumstances — in most cases, the drive will be serving up data at a significantly slower rate.

When you transfer a big file, your drive can spend most of its time actually reading or writing data, so it works at its most efficient pace. SSDs are able to do a much better job with small files, since no parts need to move to the place the data is stored, but smaller files still slow SSDs down. There are several reasons that larger capacity drives are usually faster than a comparable RPM drive of smaller capacity.

The following chart lists sample speeds for hard drive devices. It can help you decide which external drive connection is right for you. The rest can go on an external hard drive for safe-keeping. Sign up for our Newsletter! Mobile Newsletter banner close. Mobile Newsletter chat close. Mobile Newsletter chat dots. Mobile Newsletter chat avatar. Mobile Newsletter chat subscribe. Computer Hardware. How big a hard drive do I need? Companies like Seagate are offering increasingly larger capacity hard drives to consumers.

But do you really need so much space? Is your hard drive gigantic, or are you just happy to see MB? Author's Note As someone who recently decided to upgrade my hard-drive capacity when buying a laptop, I struggled to justify just how much of the space I use versus how much I wanted. How Solid-state Drives Work. Apple Inc. July 12, March 19, Oct 19,