Tech

IT’S ALL ABOUT THE DISK

James Flynn, Milborne Port Computers

Arevisit to a great article from Jimmy, with a few updates. A hard disk, as opposed to a floppy disk – now obsolete, is a disk of magnetic media that spins at a high speed and has an arm that reads the data stored on its surface or writes data to it. If you like, it’s the same as an old record player with a bit more technology. They can store unimaginable amounts of data; on a 1tb (terabyte – 1,000gb) hard disk you could fit 728 million of the old 1.44mb floppy disks. 20tb disks are now available, and my brain just can’t cope!

So, the floppy disk has gone, the IDE hard disk (IBM compatible) has gone, ESDI has gone, PATA disks are rare and we are left with SATA that now has versions I, II and III. What’s next? SATA Express! All of these new terms actually relate to the connection between the disk and the computer and the improvements are all about the speed of data transfer between the two of them. Until now, the weakest link has been the speed with which the disk can collect its data from the spinning disk; the faster the disk spins the faster the transfer rate but, the more unstable it becomes. 7,200rpm is really the fastest you can physically spin a disk, before it vibrates so much it can’t actually be read. The downside to the SATA drive is that over time it becomes slower with more clicking noises, which is a sign that the drive is starting to fail. This is sometimes helpful and a warning sign when the disk needs replacing.

Most consumer laptops and PCs have a hard disk of 1tb or 2tb, and this is loads of storage for the average user who is emailing, internet browsing, watching a few videos and holding some pictures. When we are asked to transfer data from an old PC to a new one, most users are surprised how little storage they have used from their capacity: typically, 50-100gb. Now think about internet speeds which have gone ballistic recently with the introduction of fibre, and the fact that online data storage has become so cheap that everybody can afford it. The conclusion of these facts is that what we need now is a super-fast disk that’s not really about storage, but more about making the laptop or PC equally super-fast.

Enter the SSD… that stands for ‘Solid State Disk’. A device which is completely electronic and has no moving parts, no spinning disk, no little arm, no noise, nothing. It uses a fraction of the power that a traditional disk uses, giving hours more battery life to laptops. They’ve been around for a couple of years, but with expensive price tags. However, the cost has plummeted in the last 12 months and they are now affordable and fitted in new computers, as well as an upgrade option. Typically, a three-year-old laptop with a traditional hard disk starts up in about 2-3 minutes; a similar maching with a replacement SSD will start up within 30 seconds. The future is here, now!

All you have to do is copy your existing disk to a new SSD… job done.

The downside? Most of the time with an SSD you sadly don’t receive a warning if the disk is close to failing or about to. Although, it is rare for this to happen. So, even though these devices are crazy fast they still have the ability to fail – meaning you should always have backup.

As ever, if you need help, you know where to come!