How big a hard drive do you need?

Hard Disk size is measured in gigabytes Gb (billions of bytes) andlike everything else in the PC world continues to increase in size. 200Gbdrives are readily available.

The PC-XT released by IBM in the early 1980s had a 10Mbdrive. This would not hold a small fraction of any Windows operating system!

There are a couple of factors that govern hard drive performance access time and data transfer rate.

Access time can best be explained by thinking of a record turntable. When youplay a record on one of these, you place the tone arm down on the track youwant by lifting the arm, moving it over the track, and then gently setting itdown, right?

On a hard drive there are magnetic platters that spin around at 5400 or 7200RPM. Over each platter is a read/write head that can move back and forth acrossthe platter like the tone arm of the turntable. The difference is theread/write head never touches the surface. When they do it is not by design andis called a head crash which ruins the hard drive!

When your PC wants to get a file from your hard drive, the read/write head hasto move to the track that contains the file. The time it takes to get fromwhere it is to the track is called accesstime.

Once it is over the track it begins reading data from the track. The rate atwhich it transfers data from the track to the PC is called the data transfer rate.

Access time is dependent on the RPM of the hard drive and the data transferrate is dependent on the electronics that actually read the data from theplatter.

Besides those two factors, fragmentation comes into play. Why, because a filethat is in fragments means the read/write head is constantly jumping fromfragment to fragment, which takes time, rather than coming down and reading thefile from one big continuous section!

Recommendation:

For general-purpose computing and storage of a moderate number of filesincluding digital audio and photos, a 40Gb hard drive should be plenty. Don'tworry about the drive RPM too much, because when you first access a file it isimmediately copied to memory. Subsequent accesses to that file are from memoryand the caches that support it, not the hard drive. Your changes won't be savedon the hard drive until a save is performed.

This why saving your work frequently is very important. Until you do, all yourchanges/updates are only in memory, not on the hard drive. I save changes oftenwith a quick 'alt-F-S" which forces a write back to the hard drive.

For reference, 200 MP3 files take up about 1Gb of space. 1500 digital picturesin low compression jpg format also take up about 1Gb.

If you want to store 'lots' of digital files like audio, video and photos, thena 80Gb-120Gb would be a better choice.

In either case, look for a drive that will support ATA-133 for a high datatransfer rate, instead of the slower ATA-100 or ATA-66. This will give youbetter performance. Most new PCs have disk drive controllers that can supportATA-133 disk drives.

Filenames and Filetypes

Filenames and filetypes are naming conventions used to identifyfiles on computers.

The filename is used to identify the file for you, so that when you come backand look for it, perhaps far in the future you will remember what it means toyou and that you can find it.

The filetype is used to identify and group files of similar type. As anexample, all text files are identified by the filetype 'txt.'

If you've worked on a PC with DOS, which was the predominant PC OperatingSystem (OS) before Windows, then you've used the 8.3 naming system.

The 8.3 file naming system used inDOS

The '8' refers to the maximum number of characters in the filename. Having onlyeight characters, often requires a lot of creativity in coming up with filenamethat accurately describes the file.

The '3' refers to the maximum number of characters in the filetype.
For example the file autoexec.bat has a filename of 'autoexec' and filetype of'bat.'

Windows 95 extended the maximumlength of Filenames

The maximum filename length was increased to 255 characters. All characters areallowed except for (\ / : * ? " < > | ).

This allows you to be very specific in naming your file. If you create a lot offiles this flexibility in naming becomes very important.

Most filetypes are still just three characters. However, Windows can operate onlonger filetypes.

Programs associated with filetypes

An additional feature in Windows associates each filetype with aspecific application or program.

For example the 'xls' filetype is associated with the Excel application. If youdouble click a file with a .xls filetype, Windows opens the Excel program withthe selected file loaded and ready for you to work with.

Sometimes you may want to open a file with a program other than the one Windowshas assigned it to. This can be done, but we'll save this discussion foranother tip.

Do you need a video card?

All PCs require special circuitry that is used to make the textand graphics images that you see on your display.

Most new PCs are equipped with motherboards that have integrated video chipsets in them. These integrated chips compete with other devices in the PC foraccess to the main memory. This causes congestion and slowdown.

A solution to this congestion is the Advanced Graphics Port (AGP) found onmodern motherboards. It provides a place for a video card to plug in to themotherboard giving it a fast, clear path to the RAM main memory. Besides thefast path to RAM, the video card also has its own local memory anywhere in sizefrom 32Mb to 128Mb which it uses to hold and manipulate the video data beforesending it to the display.

Newer video cards also have a DVI connector which provides digital videosignals that directly drive LCD displays equipped with a DVI connector. Thistype of connection provides very good looking video, but keep in mind that notall LCD displays have DVI connectors to take advantage of it.

Fast moving 3D graphics writes millions of bytes per second to the display andhigh performance video cards are key to realistic looking video. Running highdemand video applications without one can make your display look like one ofthose jerky frame-by-frame TV feeds from reporters in some remote part of theworld using portable, but very slow transmission equipment.

Recommendation:

For general, everyday PC operation, the integrated video chips should workadequately.

If you want to run intense applications or video games that require fast, richgraphics, then you'll need a high performance video card. Radeon video cardsfrom ATI and GeForce cards from nVidia are among the top brands offered.

Do you need a CD, DVD or combination Drive?

CD and DVD drives are optical storage devices that use lasers toread and write data on disks. All PCs today come with a CD, DVD or combinationdrive (works with CD and DVD). Most newer PCs have a combination driveinstalled that can read and write CD and read DVD. This type of drive is calleda CD R/W-DVD ROM drives.

PC manufacturers may offer a PC that comes with just a CD R/W drive or aDVD-ROM drive. A CD R/W drive will let you read and write both data and musicfiles. If you want to view movies you'll need a drive that can read DVD sinceit is the only disk type that has enough space to store movies. Even a single,full-length movie is much too large to fit on a CD.

If you want to create your own movies you'll need a DVD-writer. These areavailable in a couple of types. DVD-R/RW and DVD+R/RW are the most popular.They can read and write DVD and CD as well. Always ask before buying becausethe features offered in drives is still emerging.

Recommendation:

At a minimum, get a combination drive that can read and write CDand read DVD. This gives you a great deal of flexibility. You will be able tostore and listen to music files, watch movies, and backup all your data on CDusing a drive that costs about $120.

For about $300 you can get a drive that can read and write CD and DVD. Thisprovides all the features of the $120 drive and adds the capability for you tomake your own movies!

Drivers

A driver is a special type of software. Whenever your PC needs to connect toand control a peripheral device like a printer or scanner the driver written towork with it is required.

The level of the driver needs to be matched to the level of the device it iscontrolling. Some drivers are backward compatible. HP has done a good job withits PCL (printer control language) by making each successive PCL versionbackward compatible with earlier versions of printers. This can save a lot ofheadaches for you.

If you lose a driver or have the wrong one installed your peripheral devicebecomes a 10 pound paper weight.

So what do you do if you need a driver? Try going to the hardware manufactureswebsite and looking for a link to drivers. You may have to click around a lotto get to the right spot depending on teh organization of the web pages. Onceyou do you'll need to enter the model of the hardware you seeking the driverfor. Then you can download and install it following the instructionm that comewith it.