Working with a fast computer is convenient as it allows you to deliver work with tight deadlines. Your computer can only be fast if it has the right-size hard drive. You might think hard drive size doesn’t matter if you have an SSD.

However, size matters because your computer stores the operating system and applications on the hard drive. If you’ve installed the right-sized hard drive, your computer will perform optimally. 

What’s more, your computer will store personal data on the hard drive. You’ll need to know how to choose the right size for optimal performance.

Uses of Computer Hard Drive

A computer’s hard drive is an essential component in the optimal functioning of your computer. Your computer can’t operate without it. That’s why you have to ensure you’ve installed the right hard drive on your computer. Your computer uses the hard drive for the purposes below:

Operating System Storage

Your computer needs software to operate as intended. Among the software needed is the operating system (OS) which controls your computer’s hardware. Computers use different versions of OS with Windows and MacOS being the most popular versions.

Additionally, some computers use Linux. Whichever OS version your computer uses, it stores it on the hard drive. The OS instructs the computer hardware to execute your input. 

Application Storage

Your computer also stores software programs on the hard drive. The applications (Apps) perform specific tasks such as processing words or browsing. 

Personal Data Storage

The document you wrote on a word processing app like Microsoft Word is stored on the hard drive. What’s more, your computer will store your favorite pictures, videos, and music on the hard drive.

Gaming

If you love the thrill of computer gaming, you want to allocate a substantial portion of the hard drive space to your large game files. The computer will access the files when you launch and play the games downloaded to your hard drive.

Data Backup

Your computer also relies on its hard drive to prevent you from losing important documents, pictures, and music files. The computer will duplicate these data to prevent any important data loss.

Virtual Memory

Sometimes, your computer borrows a small portion of your hard drive capacity to supplement the RAM. This improves computer speed when you’re running a more demanding task.

Types of Hard Drives and Their Capacities

You already recognize the importance of a computer’s hard drive. Your computer can’t work without it. When looking for a hard drive for your computer, you’ll choose between three options:

HDD (Hard Disk Drives)

These hard drives feature a platter with a magnetic surface on which the computer writes data. The platter spins incredibly fast when your computer is powered on. They have been the traditional devices on which computers stored data.

You can still find these hard drives with capacities starting from 500 GB up to 20 TB. Their incredible capacity range makes them ideal for storing very large files. Aside from high capacity, HDDs are cost-effective. However, they’re slow, which will cause your computer to lag.

SSD (Solid State Drives)

This type of hard drive was developed to improve the performance of computers since HDDs weren't fast enough to catch up with advanced software. These hard drives have no moving parts. They use flash memory to store essential data, making them incredibly faster than HDDs.

You can find SSD capacity as low as 120 GB. You can also buy an 8 TB SSD for your computer. Usually, these hard drives have a lower storage capacity than HDDs. You’ll pay a higher price for these hard drives since they’re much faster than HDDs.

Hybrid Drives (SSHD)

Solid-state Hybrid Drives (SSHD) are hard drives that bring the best of both worlds to your computer. They are HDD hard drives with a small built-in SSD for storing frequently used data. These drives range from 500 GB to several terabytes.

The SSD memory inside these drives ranges from 8GB to 32 GB. With an SSHD drive, you can store a significant amount of data while having decently fast performance. 

Factors to Consider When Choosing Capacity

You’ll have three types of hard drives to choose from. However, you’ll consider a few factors to get the best hard drive for the purpose at hand:

Your Budget

HDD drives have the lowest cost per GB of storage capacity. You’ll pay $0.03-$0.04 per GB of HDD storage. On the other hand, you’ll pay $0.05-$0.06 per GB for SSHD storage. SSDs have the highest cost, making you pay $0.08-$0.15+ per GB of SSD storage.

When choosing the best hard drive for your computer or laptop, consider cost and storage needs.

Speed vs. Storage Capacity

There is a correlation between hard drive speed and capacity. HDDs with larger storage capacities offer a slight speed advantage since they can pack more data on the platter. If you choose an HDD and want faster performance, you’ll go for one with a higher capacity.

However, you’ll trade off speed for affordability and more storage if you opt for HDDs. SSHDs don’t perform any differently than HDDs except for the small SSD that caches data and improves boot time and application load time.

An SSD is a clear winner if you want speed in your computer performance. You’ll have an even better speed if you choose an SSD with a higher storage capacity. 

While higher capacities can yield a slight speed increase, SSDs perform differently based on their primary performance factor, such as SATA and NVMe. The controller also impacts speed.

You’ll trade off cost-effective performance for speed and better responsiveness if you choose an SSD hard drive. If you’re working with a tight budget and need more storage, you'll choose an HDD. At the same time, you’ll opt for an SSD if you want performance and responsiveness.

An SSHD drive offers the best of both worlds, balancing speed and storage.

Compatibility with Existing Systems

Connecting a hard drive to your computer requires a specific connection interface. SATA is the most widely used one for HDDs and SSDs. This interface provides a connection speed of up to 6 Gbps. 

NVMe hard drives connect directly to your computer’s motherboard. As a result, they provide higher data transfer speeds than SATA hard drives. You can be sure to get speeds exceeding 3500 MB/s.

Recommended Capacities for Common Use Cases

You want to consider your activities on a computer when buying a hard drive with the right storage capacity. You’ll consider the activities below:

General Home Use

If you use your computer for tasks such as writing documents, watching favorite movies, or running browsing applications, a hard drive with a capacity between 500 GB and 1 TB will be very capable of handling these tasks.

Gaming Activities

While you’ll benefit from faster game loading and launch speeds with an SSD, you can still run a game from an HDD. 

However, your HDD will need a capacity ranging from 1-4 TB for improved gaming speed. SSDs perform incredibly faster ,even with lower capacities. You’ll still need a 500 GB–1 TB SSD drive.

Content Creators

Being a content creator means you often work with large files. Your videos and images will boast high-resolution graphics, increasing file size significantly. As a result, you’ll need more storage capacities. You’ll need over 4TB of HDD to store your content.

Enterprise or Data Centers

An enterprise has many files to store. Data centers also have a lot of data to store. A multi-terabyte hard drive might be enough for an enterprise. 

But it might not meet the needs of a data center. In this case, the data center will organize multiple multi-terabyte hard drives into a single logical unit (RAID setup) for all the storage needs.

Future-Proofing Your Storage

As your data grows, you’ll need more space to store important information and data. It is very important to make your data accessible even in the future. You can do a few things to prevent data loss and ensure you can retrieve data for future processing and use.

Cloud Storage

You want to adopt a hybrid approach to your data storage needs. Storing some data in the cloud can free up precious hard drive space. You’ll combine local storage with cloud storage to ensure you store all essential data without losing any important data.

The computer’s hard drive will store frequently used data. This leaves data you don't often use in cloud storage for later usage. The cloud offers a supplementary space for extra data that you will need later.

Utilize RAID Configurations

If you can't get a single hard drive with the capacity to store all data, you can organize different physical hard drives into one single storage facility called RAID. This configuration allows you to divide data into blocks and store them on different hard drives.

This configuration even repeats data on multiple hard drives, so you can always retrieve data from another hard drive if one of the hard drives fails.

External Hard Drives

You can also invest in external hard drives to free up space in your hard drive that’s inside your computer. You can even choose to store data on labeled external hard drives for easy identification of the types of data you need.

External hard drives are good for data backup. You can transfer data from your computer’s hard drive to an external storage unit to prevent any data loss if you lose your computer. 

Summing Up

Your computer needs a hard drive to function. It will be impossible to use it if you don't have enough storage on your computer’s hard drive. Remember that the computer allocates a portion of your hard drive space for the operating system and software programs.

Since the OS and applications share the hard drive space, you'll need to opt for a hard drive with the right capacity. Generally, SSDs perform better than HDDs and SSHDs. However, you’ll pay a price for these superior hard drives, but you can choose HDDs for more storage.