We all know for a fact that laptops have an optical drive and a hard disk. It is also worth knowing that these features continue to change over time. When you check out laptop specifications, you will also notice that there is a reference to spindles. These spindles actually constitute each drive of the laptop. This means, if a system has dual hard drives as well as a DVD burner drive, it would also have three spindles.
Found below are important things to consider when reading certain laptop specifications.
The Hard Drive
A hard drive is considered as the most typical form of storage among laptops. The first thing you need to check is its performance, specifically with regards to speed. Most hard drives can spin at 5,400 rpm speed but those with higher performance systems as well as desktop replacements now have 7,200 rpm drives. With a high spin rate, better performance is guaranteed. The downside is - it tends to use up more battery life if it's not plugged into an outlet. For this reason, more users still prefer those with a 4,200 rpm speed with a much lower performance; they don't only reduce power consumption, they are also sold at a much lower cost.
A laptop hard drive is usually 2.5 in. in size. They may also range from 80 GB to 750 GB in size. For a standard laptop system, having something between 250 GB to 750 GB should be more than enough. However, if you want a desktop replacement class notebook as your primary system then you need a 500 GB to 750 GB. Also, these days, a few ultraportable systems make use of a 1.8 in. PC card-style of hard drive. In this case, they would range from 40 GB to 400 GB.
For those planning to upgrade their hard drive or if you're just planning to replace your damaged hard drive, you also need to consider drive accessibility. For most of the laptops you will find in retail outlets, their hard drives are internally installed. If this is the case, it is only the authorized technician who can open up, repair or replace the damage hard drive. Though this is not that big a deal for most people, in the corporate setting, having this kind of problem would mean more down time for their workforce. With a laptop that has an accessible or swappable drive bay, it is easier and a lot quicker to access for replacements or upgrading purposes.
What about solid state drives?
Nowadays, there are laptops that already have solid state drives. These SSDs make use of a set of flash memory chips instead of a magnetic platter in terms of storing data. Aside from faster data access, they also provide higher reliability and lower power consumption. For the cons, they store less data and they actually cost more than hard drives.
Other Drives.
Before, laptops were necessitated to feature an optical drive. This was required for loading software purposes. However, now that there is digital distribution and other forms or alternative methods of booting, these optical drives are no longer required. Though they are still used for loading software from time to time, most users just use them now for watching media and for creating CDs as well as DVDs.
If you are still considering an optical drive, just make sure it is compatible with DVDs. This is since most laptops are used as portable DVD players as well. With a basic CD-ROM drive, you can still load applications and play audio CDs.
Since DVD burners are much cheaper now than before, CD-RWs are no longer the preferred choice. The standard these days for laptops are DVD writers since they can both read and write CDs as well as DVD formats. Due to this, people find them useful for watching DVD movies or even for editing their own DVD movies.
If you are planning to buy a dual layer drive, they have twice the storage capacity as compared to traditional DVD media. There are also some drives that support burning labels over to compatible media such as LightScribe and Labelflash.
The more recent release is Blu-ray. As a matter of fact, it is regarded as the "defacto high definition standard". It has all the features of that of a traditional DVD burner, especially with its ability to play Blu-ray movies. With a Blue-ray writer, you can burn lots of video or data to BD-RE and BD-R media.
Author Resource:
Though laptop hard drives are much slower than desktop hard drives or any type of external hard drive , there are still things to consider with regards to the hard drive specification of a laptop. Though SSDs or solid state drives are also becoming popular, they still store less data and they cost more than traditional hard drives.
![[Valid RSS feed]](http://www.look4articles.com/images/icon_Rss.png "XML Feed For RSS"){kind=icon}
Category Rss Feed
Print This Article
Add To Favorites
![[Valid RSS feed]](http://www.look4articles.com/images/rss.jpg "XML Feed For RSS")