Chapter 7: 9/19/20

Hard Drives

Hard drives can be stored internally or externally on a PC, and can hold data into the terabyte range of storage. Hard drives have platters which have two read/write heads on each side, and these platters store data. The faster the RPM of the read/write heads, the faster data is transferred & the higher the cost.

Solid State Drives (SSD)

SSD’s use nonvolatile flash memory to store data, and have no moving parts which make them more reliable than hard drives. Performance of the SSD is increased compared to the hard drive. Most SSD’s use NAND flash memory, where a 1 represents free space & a 0 represents space is filled. SSD’s are usually more expensive than hard drives.

M.2 & NVME Drives

The M.2 slot usually found on the motherboard can hold an M.2 Drive. M.2 drives are a type of SSD, and they can also use Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVME) to store data, which is one of the fastest drives.

PATA, SATA, and SAS Connectivity/Installation

A motherboard contains connections for all of these types of cables. PATA is the oldest, and SATA is currently used for most hard drives. When installing any hard drive, they must be connected via a PATA/SATA/SAS connection to the motherboard in order for them to work. M.2 Drives are placed on the motherboard in the M.2 slot. Once a new hard drive or SSD is connected to the PC, it must be configured in the BIOS as well as the OS in order for the computer to recognize it. Most BIOS configurations will automatically recognize a new drive, but sometimes you need to manually tell it that a new drive is installed.

Windows Disk Management

Windows uses the Disk Manager to configure storage, and the main two types of storage used is Basic & Dynamic Storage. With a Dynamic Disk you can resize and change partitions, but with a basic disk you cannot.