Quick Question

gamerman4

Active Member
A storage drive is usually just another name for a hard drive. I often refer to any hard drive that doesn't have an OS installed to it as a storage drive since its purpose is just storage and has no real important value other than that.
 

Diamondsleeper

New Member
What is the difference between:

Hard Drive

&

Storage Drive

?

The way you have it phrased makes me wonder if you meant to say what is the diff between a system hard drive and a storage drive.

The main hard drive or your system hard drive is what you operating system runs on. You can use the extra space on it for storage but is not generally recommended unless you back it up to a storage drive.

Storage Drive:
An extra phisically separate drive or a separate partion on your system drive is used as extra space to put all the stuff you don't want to lose in case your operating system drive messes up or crashes. In other words the storage drive is extra space used to backup or make a complete backup copy of your system hard drive. That way if something goes wrong with it you can instantly retore it. You have to back it up regularly though. Like daily, weekly, monthly or whatever. Backup programs like Symantec Ghost do this automatically based on your preference. Its what I use.
 

Diamondsleeper

New Member
What is the accurate term to use?

Hard drive or hard disk drive?

They are exactly the same thing. They are interchageble. When somebody says Hard drive or hard disk drive to me it means exactly the same thing. They are the same piece of hardware. The difference is that a storage drive generally does not have the actual operating system (software) like Windows intalled on it. The drive that has the operating system installed on it is generally not considered to be a storage drive but it is still technically a hard drive. They can be two identical pieces of hardware (hard drives). It just depends on how they are used to determine what you call them. I only use the terms System drive (operating system) and Storage drive (backup). :)
 
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gamerman4

Active Member
Its like asking the difference between a tire and a spare tire, both are the same thing, one is just serving a different purpose than the other.
Also, HDD, Hard Disk, Hard Drive, and Hard Disk Drive are all correct ways to refer to it.
 

laznz1

New Member
i don't think there is anything difference between the two just like car and automobile
 
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