Hard drives come in many different sizes and configurations. How much data a hard drive can hold is measured in gigabytes (GB). The latest hard drives can hold anywhere from 80 GB to 1000 GB (1 TB)! When buying a hard drive, size isn't the only factor to look at, however. By choosing the right hard drive for your needs, you'll enjoy your computer more. Hard drives are so inexpensive these days it makes no sense whatsoever to get one that doesn't fulfill your needs. For business or basic home use, an 80 GB hard drive should suffice. If you plan on downloading music, movies, or installing a lot of games on your computer, your hard drive should be at least 160 GB. For laptop users, the same space requirements apply, however, many laptops come with small hard drives. Many laptop users choose to keep the small hard drive and buy an external hard drive for excess files to keep costs down. Some computer users think the more hard drive space they have, the faster their computer will run.

Unfortunately, this is not true. As long as you have at least 15% free space on your computer, your hard drive space doesn't play a factor in computer speed. You can have a huge hard drive, but it will be worthless if it doesn't move data fast enough for your computer! To find data, hard drives have platters on spindles that spin, similar to a CD. How fast a hard drive spins is measured in RPM (revolutions per minute). The higher a hard drive's RPM is, the faster it will perform. Desktop hard drives almost always have 7200 RPM hard drives. Laptop hard drives can range from 4200 RPM to 5400 RPM for budget and midrange uses and 7200 RPM for high end use. Hard drives with RPMs of 10,000 or more are available, but those are mainly for gamers, computer enthusiasts, and servers.