Your hard drive is the part of the computer which stores the information such as the operating system (Windows, Linux or OSX), programs and personal files like photos, music, video and documents.
The CPU (Central Processing Unit) usually gets referred to as the brain of the computer because it does the thinking, but the hard drive is just as important and I refer to it as the brain also as it stores most of the information.
A great way to speed up your computer is to have a faster hard drive. Access speeds to your programs and files dramatically increase performance and although you can increase speed many ways, a faster hard drive in most circumstances will do just that.
All hard drives are not created equal. There are a lot of different types of hard drives out there and it seems every week there is a new type of technology.
A lot of my customers are confused and this post is for Steven, who I spoke to this week in understanding what these different hard drives do and how they work in each system.
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Data recovery is the process of recovering your precious data, photos, documents, work files etc from a misbehaving or failed computer or hard drive.
Data recovery is not always possible, sometimes it can be like trying to draw blood out of a stone.
To make the process a little less painful, Townsville computer repair Nerds offer a 100% free diagnosis. If we can recover your data, you are under no obligation to accept out quote.
If you don’t both the diagnosis and Quote are free.
External Hard Drives
This post is not really about external hard drives as it does not relate to speeding your computer or laptop up. But I will quickly mention them to get it out of the way.
An external hard drive is usually used as a add-on device to store files (not on your computers internal drive).
They usually connect to your computer via a USB connection, and are either a box the size of your hand or a little flash thumb drive.
They are not for running programs and operating systems off and will not speed up your computer. Those hard drives which do that are internal hard drives and usually show up in your computer as your C: drive.
IDE Drives
IDE stands for Integrated Drive Electronics.
Most of you will not have these. In fact, its probably been a few years since I have seen one. They are mush slower and older technology.
If you do have one in your computer (picture below) it would be a really good idea to back your information up as soon as possible, to another computer, online storage or external hard drive incase it fails.
It is very old and very close to having passed its shelf life.
IDE can easily be identified by it’s old style 40 pin ribbon cable connector.
SATA HDD (Hard Disk Drive)
Serial Advanced Technology Attachment is the standard most people use today in the average computer.
Although it is certainly a huge leap from IDE drives, because it is a HDD it uses the spinning platter disks which move around like a record on a record player, with a head reading the information also.
The problem with this though is it is bound by the speed at which the drives moves around (usually 7200 rpms) and the speed of the head to access information.
You probably have one of these in your computer which is good. Because if you have a Serial ATA connection you can change this hard drive for the next one.
SATA SSD (Solid State Drive)
A Solid State Drive is exactly that. It has not moving rotating parts and are usually 3 to 5 times faster than a traditional hard disk drive.
Most Solid State Drives are made to run over the SATA connection so there is a very good chance your current laptop or computer will be able to take advantage of this technology quite easily.
This speed comes with a trade off though in the form of size and price. You will pay more for a solid state drive and get less space.
You will immediately see an increase in boot time, file access speeds, copy and pasting and opening and closing programs. Games will open much faster.
M.2 Drives
Now we are playing with fire.
M.2 drives are very similar to Sata SSD drives in they have no moving parts.
However, due to the SATA connection in your computers limitation, SATA SSD’s cant take full advantage of the speed of a SSD. Thats where M.2 drives and connections come in.
M.2 drives look entirely different, more like a piece of RAM (Memory) and require a whole different type of connection on your motherboard.
If you motherboard in your computer does not support M.2 and does not have the connection you can not use a M.2 drive and must use the standard SSD mentioned above.
NVMe (NVM Express)
These are the bees knees right now, and are super fast.
Although they are faster than the standard M.2 ssd drive, they do have increased performance which you can see depending on what you are doing.
However, for most users you will probably not see the difference for daily use between the two. You will see a major difference though between the m.2 connected SSD’s and both SATA Drives.
NVMe drives come in two forms, standardised PCI Express expansion cards and M.2 slots.
Lets Look at Speeds of Sata
Understanding the speeds of each drive is not so cut and dry.
There are many different things to take into consideration, such as different manufacturers, different systems, different motherboards, and different operating systems.
The speed a hard drives reads and writes are different as well.
Even when we refer to Sata, there is Sata1, Sata 2 and Sata 3 all running at different speeds.
So the list below shows the theoretical speed of each type of storage technology.
Sata 1 = 1.5G/bs – Interface Support up to 150MB/s.
Sata 2 = 3G/bs – Interface Support up to 300MB/s.
Sata 3 = 6G/bs – Interface Support up to 600MB/s.
This does not mean you will necessarily get these speeds. But is does mean even the fastest Sata Solid State drive will not exede 600MB/s on a Sata 3 interface.
Townsville Computer Repair Nerds Can Help
Townsville Nerds can help you will all your hard drive needs and help you speed up your computer.
Please feel free to contact us on 0402 80 7890 as we offer a completely free quote and diagnosis. If you don’t accept our quote, it still costs you nothing.
