Everything you wanted to know about hard drives, but were afraid to ask.

What does a hard drive do?

Storage is the hard drive’s responsibility. Everything you keep on your computer is on a hard drive. Not just documents, pictures, music, and videos. Your programs, your preferences, even your operating system—they’re all stored on your computer’s hard drive.

If your hard drive is damaged, you can lose it all. That’s the sad truth. Which is why most people have a backup system. They get another hard drive and copy all their important files onto that.

How much capacity do you need?

Everything that can be saved on a hard drive is measured in terms of its size. Text is very small, pictures are larger, music is larger still, and video is the largest of the bunch.

A hard drive is like a scale. It doesn’t know the difference between things that are on it; it only knows their size. But instead of pounds, a hard drive measures things in terms of megabytes (MB), gigabytes (GB), and terabytes (TB.)

Roughly speaking, a megabyte is 1 million bytes, a gigabyte is 1 billion bytes, and a terabyte is 1 trillion bytes.

So what does that mean for you?

If you need to transfer files between computers or a drive to back up just some of your files, you can get by with a smaller drive (250GB to 500GB).

If you want to back up your entire computer, or even several computers, or if you work with a lot of video and audio files, you’ll want a larger drive (1TB or larger).

Will your drive work with a PC or a Mac?

Any Seagate drive works with either a PC or a Mac. Some drives are already formatted to work with one or the other. But any drive can be reformatted to work with either type of computer.

IMPORTANT: If you reformat a drive, every single file on that drive is erased. So make sure you copy your files somewhere safe before you reformat.

It’s more difficult to use the same drive on both a PC and a Mac. The short answer is, they’re not really compatible. The more detailed answer is that, in a few specific circumstances, you can do a few specific things. You can read about those here.

What are the different types of hard drive connections?

There are four basic ways to connect your hard drive to your computer:

1. USB
   This is the most common connection type. There’s no setup at all. Just plug it in. The computer recognizes the drive and you’re able to read and save files almost instantly.
2. Firewire
   Plug—and—play like USB, Firewire is available in two speeds. FireWire 400 (also known as 1394a) performs at speeds similar to USB.  FireWire 800 (1394b) is significantly faster and is almost exclusively available for Mac systems.
3. SATA
   This is the standard connection for internal hard drives. Offers the highest file transfer speeds of any format.
4. eSATA
   A less—common, high—performance connection most commonly found in PCs. An eSATA connection performs at speeds that most closely resemble an internal drive.

How important is hard drive speed?

When you start your computer, open a file, listen to a song, or do just about anything else, you use your hard drive. The discs inside the drive spin. The faster they spin, the more quickly your computer can find the file you want.

So a drive that’s 7200 rpm will be faster than one that’s 5400 rpm. What that means for your day—to—day use will vary. With external drives, you’ll hardly notice a difference. With internal drives, the difference will be slight with smaller files and applications, but will be obvious with larger files and applications.

Should you choose internal or external?

An internal drive provides built—in storage at top speeds. An external drive gives you greater flexibility and expanded storage whenever you need it.

Each choice has its benefits and drawbacks.

Internal drives have to be physically installed by opening up your computer—something some people are hesitant to do. But your files and programs are stored directly on your computer; they’re always there whenever you need them.

External drives are connected to your computer via plug—in cables. This can allow you to take the files with you, transfer them to other computers, or instantly add storage to your computer or network without any technical hurdles.

 

How much can I store?

	Digital Music (MP3)*	Digital Photos	Digital Video	DVD—Quality Movies†
250 GB††	4,165 hours	80,000	250 hours	62
500 GB††	8,330 hours	160,000	500 hours	125
1 TB	16,660 hours	320,000	1000 hours	250
1.5 TB	24,990 hours	480,000	1,500 hours	375

^{* Average file size using cameras highest resolution JPEG mode. The actual number of images per HDD will vary and depends on the camera model and compatibility of the scene being photographed.
† 2-hour DVD quality movies.
†† One gigabyte, or GB, equals one billion bytes when referring to hard drive capacity. Accessible capacity may vary depending on operating environment and formatting. Quantitative usage examples for various applications are for illustrative purposes. Actual quantities will vary based on various factors, including file size, file format, features and application softwares.}