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Hard Drive Comparison Courtesy of the TechReport.comThe two things to know about serial ATA drives, if you don't know much about them to begin with, are that they are better, and that most laptops don't have them. Does that mean most laptop hard drives are inferior to desktop pc drives?In general, yes. It means most of us have clunky drives that chug along at spindle speeds of around 4,200 RPM and only house about 30 to 40 GB of storage space. In other words, that may leave us in need of a laptop hard drive replacement. But before you drop the cash on a new serial drive with 120 GB of space and 7,200 RPM speed, it might take some convincing to get it through your hard head that you need a new hard drive. The whole reason behind inferior laptop hard drives is a tradeoff for mobility. Mobile drives have to be smaller and lighter to fit into the smaller, ultralight laptop chassis. Well, duh! The average desktop hard drive weighs in at about half of a kilogram, is about 4 inches wide, 1 inch tall, and nearly 6 inches long. Laptop drives on the other hand, weigh in at only 100 grams, nearly one-fifth the weight of the desktop's, and it is just 2.75 inches wide, less than half an inch tall, and about 4 inches long. So you can see why mobile hard drives can't pack the capabilities of a desktop hard drive-there's no room. But what the smaller size does allow them to do is run on less battery power (again, they're built for mobility), and laptop drives can usually take more of a beating than their desktop brethren. So there is some take in this give and take. But that doesn't mean you have to always be stuck between a rock and a hard drive. Manufacturers out there like Fujitsu, Hitachi, Seagate and Western Digital are producing hard-to-beat mobile ATA hard drives with up to 7,200 RPM speed and up to 160 GB of storage. They're even getting into the newest hard drive technology-perpendicular recording. Standard hard drives store info literally in a line parallel to the drive's surface. But by going perpendicular, hard drives can squeeze out more storage juice. More - Laptop Hard Drive Comparison at the Tech Report Read another recent article: - March of the Linux Penguins By Matthew Brodsky - Laptopical Thursday, May 11, 2006 |
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