WTF How to hard drive...

[ichibanman]

I'm sorta new at buying computers.

I know the RPM is how fast you will retrieve you information (rotations per minute), but what is this SATA 3Gb/sec thing? And what's a cache? Is 32mb of "cache" good?

Also, I'm confused with the RPM. Doesn't the Ghz of ur procesor determine the speed at which your computer runs?

 

[tlarkin]

RPM represents how fast the platters spin in side the hard drive, it doesn't represent actual data throughput.

 

[porterjw]

And cache is how much data can be stored for quicker retrieval. HDD's used to generally offer 8 MB and many still do. The standard now is pretty much 16 MB at the current time. 32MB will be more and more prevalent in the future as technology advances.

 

[Kwestr]

To answer the last part there, keep in mind that many things will affect the speed of your computer. You could have a screaming 3.5GHz computer, but it will not run very fast if you only have 256MB of ram and a very slow Hard Drive.

One of the best things to check on your hard drive specifications is the Average Seek Time. In short, this explains how long it will take your hard drive to grab a piece of data. Theoretically, the lower this is, the faster the hard drive will be. Also, as imsati stated, "the cache is how much data can be stored for quicker retrieval". The cache is generally a small memory chip on the actual hard drive that does hold recent data that was accessed by your computer.This is very important for a fast system, too.

More RAM for your computer will also determine the speed. I used to have an old AMD Athlon with an 800MHz Thunderbird processor in it that would outperform my buddy's Pentium 4 just because I had 4 times the RAM.

SATA is a protocol... or the type of connection that your HD uses for transfer. 3Gb/s is the maximum speed that data can pass between the HD and the rest of the computer.

Hope this helps you out

 

[PohTayToez]

RPM represents how fast the platters spin in side the hard drive, it doesn't represent actual data throughput.

While technically true, the rate at which you can access information is limited by RPM, as we really aren't near being able to read at the full 3Gb/s that SATA supports.

 

[tlarkin]

While technically true, the rate at which you can access information is limited by RPM, as we really aren't near being able to read at the full 3Gb/s that SATA supports.

Technically, it is limited by the system and how much bandwidth can be utilized for full through put. Not every system performs the same. RPMs still represent the speed at which the platter spins.