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USING AN EXTERNA HARD DRIVE MAC AND PC FOR MAC
This is because when you initially connect an external HDD made for Mac (to a Mac computer), you won’t be required to format it before you begin transferring files. Key considerations Formattingįor Mac users, buying an external HDD already formatted for your system makes getting started much easier. There are varying levels of storage capacity in an external hard drive, and the overall size of the HDD depends on the model. Others will need to be plugged into the wall. Some external hard drives get power directly from the computer connection. Flash drives are external drives, but they aren’t as fast, and they don’t usually store as much space as their larger external hard drive relatives. flash drivesĮxternal hard drives are basically hard drives (HDD) or solid state drives (SSD) that are wrapped in their own protective casing and connect to your computer from the outside as opposed to the inside. They use a redundant array of independent disks (RAID) to prevent data losses and downtime If one of the drives fails while you're working, the data will still be available on another drive.There are hard drives that may hold volumes like 3TB, 6TB, and 10TB, but they are much less common than the standard hard drives that hold: 1TB, 2TB, 4TB, 8TB, and 18TB. SAS drives use cables with a maximum length of 33ft, to meet the needs of large or complex servers. On the other hand, SATA drives have more capacity and consume less power. They can run 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and handle up to 1.6 million hours of use at 45°.
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Thanks to their speed and reliability, SAS drives are mostly common in servers, data centers and business computer systems. SAS Internal Hard Drives Offer Superior Reliability SATA cables have a maximum length of 3.3ft so that you can mount the hard drive everywhere inside the computer case. Each drive connects directly to the motherboard, with no need for a master-slave configuration.
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These drives connect directly to the motherboard with cables that are much smaller than the PATA ones, allowing air to flow better inside the computer case. SATA drives improve the overall speed of the PC, allowing apps and games to load faster. SATA computer hard drives can transmit data at a speed of 150, 300 or 600MBps. SATA Drives Are Faster and Require Less Bulky Cables The PATA standard can transmit data at a maximum speed of 133MBps. This is possible thanks to the configuration of the motherboard, which has both a primary and secondary PATA channel. The master drive communicates directly with the computer and controls the slave drive. If you want multiple PATA hard drives in your PC, you must connect them with the correct jumpers in a master-slave configuration. These cables may cause overheating inside the computer case, especially for laptops. PATA hard drives need bulky ribbon-like cables to connect to the motherboard. Are PATA Desktop Hard Drives Compatible With Older Computers? HDDs, instead, work better as mass storage devices. Thanks to their speed, SSDs are standard as boot drives. However, HDDs can have up to 10TB of capacity, while SSDs can only handle up to 4TB of storage space. Since they have less fragile internal parts, SSDs are generally more durable. They also tend to generate less heat inside the computer case and to consume less energy than HDDs. SSDs, instead, use flash memory.įor this reason, SSDs are much faster. Inside the hard drive, there's also an I/O controller that communicates with the other components of the computer system. A motor spins the plates while an actuator arm reads and writes on them. HDDs use platters to perform their essential functions. The most common hard drive interfaces are PATA, SATA and SAS. Whether you have a laptop or a desktop computer, there are several types of hard drives to choose from. Computer hard drives contain all the data in your PC, from the operating system to music, movies and video games.