Questions About Hard Drives

What is the difference between SATA and IDE?
The first thing you'll notice is the interface. SATA drives have a single cable with a small connector, while an IDE drive will have a flat ribbon cable. SATA drives have a faster data transfer rate. Your motherboard must be able to support a SATA drive. Otherwise, you'll need to buy an IDE drive.

How often should I defrag my hard disk?
That really depends on what you do with the drive. If you add and delete a lot of data, you'll want to defrag monthly. If you're a casual user, every three to six months is probably fine.

How can I diagnose problems with my hard drive?
A great place to start with hard drive diagnostics is right at the manufacturer's website. All major brand drives will have utilities for their drives, such as Maxtor's Maxblast or Western Digital's Data Lifeguard.

Can I put my old laptop hard drive in my desktop computer?
Sure, all you need is an adapter. The adapter converts the connection to the laptop drive to interface with the IDE and power cables of your desktop PC.

What is the best way to partition my drive?
If you have a Windows XP or Vista disk, you can install the Operating System and create partitions during the install. The installation will ask you how much of the drive you want to use for the Windows install, and you can specify a portion of the drive's space and leave the rest to be formatted later within Windows. That extra space is another partition.

Can I recover data that has been erased by my hard drive?
Yes, there are programs out there that recove lost data quite esily. The important thing to remember is that data will be overwritten the more you use the PC. So if you accidently erased something critical, be sure to stop and use a program like Undelete Now to get the data back.