In my last post, we talked about the effect of your computer's RAM memory as to the performance of your computer. In this post, we have how the Harddisk capacity affects the speed of your PC.

Basically, the Hard disk (HDD) is the logical drive where all your data is stored. A computer may have multiple HDDs on it or only one. Laptops generally have only one HDD when distributed by their manufacturers. As for desktop computers, a knowledgeable person may have more than one HDD at a time which usually ranges from 2-4 pieces (at least in the old days, people tend to have 4 HDDs because of lack of storage, these days you have 1 HDD more than equivalent to 500 times than the old ones). Going back to my introduction, HDDs store your data in them. Storage capacities are then classified into a measurement item called "Bytes". Many people see this but doesn't really understand what this is. Most of them know only MB and GB (Megabytes and Gigabytes) but if you go further back, here is a conversion schedule:

A simple illustration to understand this better is this, for those who listens to music from their ipods or simlar gadgets, your mp3 music files are usually 3-4 Mb in size. So using the schedule above you know how big is a harddisk.

Going a little bit technical, a data is not just stored in your HDD like a bunch of items scattered everywhere with no dividers or anything. The HDD is actually segregated by divisions called "sectors". These sectors are numbered and are identified by the computer's operating system (OS) using those numbers. When a data is copied from an external source or is created by a program within the computer, a specific sector is used to store that file (data file). Accordingly, when a sector is full then the OS uses another. A minor setback is created when because of this system similar items are stored into different sectors which are logically far from each other (e.g. sector 1 vs. sector 1111111). The OS then reads these separated data going back and forth the disk to process what it needs to process. And this is one factor that slows down your computer.

Luckily, operating systems like Windows have a built-in "disk defragmenter" which arrange these files into order. Except for system files used and runned by the OS, files or data are basically arranged by the disk defragmenter program into the most efficient way it can, thus making it faster for the processor to read those files when needed. The disk defragment may be found (for Windows users) at Start > Programs > Accessories > System. It is generally adivisable to defragment your HDD on a periodic basic for maintenance (semi-annual or quarterly). Other programs related to security also have disk defragmenting functions which may also be used for this purpose.

As I said, that is only one factor that can slow down your PC. Another factor is when the HDD is near its full capacity. As shown above HDDs are measured by the "byte" system. It is to follow that HDDs can be full. How? To start with, the HDD when purchased with an already setup computer system, is already used by the operating system. The basic Windows will usually consume Gigabytes off your harddisk which depends on what version you use. Accordingly, when I said capacity it is not only pertaining to the size (Tb) but more on the % used. A 1Tb HDD is already 80% used up when it reached 800Gb (remaining 200Gb) while a 500Gb HDD is only 50% used up when it is at 250Gb. one must be consious enough to know the capacity of his harddisk so as not to risk damaging it. A 90-99% used haddisk has a high risk of data loss and so I will advise my readers not to come to this point. HDDs these are not that expensive along with other more affordable storage devices like the flashdrives or DVDs. Of course aside from data loss the computer significantly slows down when it reaches this capacity threshold due to the simple fact that the processor has more data to read before it can find what it's looking for.

In my next posts, we will have the effects of your computer's Processor, Video card memory, Network speed, and Internet Speed.

Thanks to all my readers and I hope you learned something from this blog! Cheers people! :)