How to determine if you need a new hard drive

By Jeremy Ashburn

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Stop for a moment and think about all the digital pictures, videos, and documents you have. My digital collection includes seven years of pictures, three years of videos, more than 500 music albums, and countless documents. All this data takes up a lot of space. My hard drive is now 2/3 full -- looks like it's time to buy another hard drive.

How full is your hard drive? Do yourself a favor and take a quick look right now. How much data is on it? How much free space do you have? My hard drive has 232 gigs of usable space with 147 gigs of used space and only 85 gigs of free space. From my experience I've found that it's never good to fill a hard drive more than 2/3 full. Hard drives tend to crash if they"re filled beyond 75 percent of their capacity.

So, I need another hard drive as the last thing I want is a hard drive crash.

Most of us have bought a new hard drive at time or another. New drives come in two flavors: internal or external. Internal drives are cheaper but slightly more difficult to install, external drives are more expensive but easy to install and portable. If you think you need a new drive and aren't sure which type to buy I recommend first buying an external hard drive. You can buy this 500GB Toshiba 500GB drive at Sam's Club for $89.67. The thing is very portable (weighs 6 oz.), uses the common USB interface, and backs up your files with one click. If you want a bigger bang for your buck you can get this 1TB (which is 1,000 Gigabytes) Western Digital for $99.84. Of course, Walmart sells a variety of external hard drives from $68 on up. This 320GB Seagate drive costs $78, is very portable at 5 oz, and easily fits in your pocket at 1/2-inch thick.

I primarily use internal hard drives. Some people are reluctant to buy internal drives because the installation can be more involved. If you've never installed one yourself don"t be put off by a little complexity. Here's the installation process in a nutshell:

• Turn of off your computer
• Open your computer case
• Screw in the new drive
• Attach the power and data cables
• Power your computer back on

In most cases your system will automatically detect the new drive and you'll be good to go. Installation should only take about 5-10 minutes. It's really not that difficult to learn. Here"s an eHow article which walks you through the specifics.

I buy all of my internal drives at Newegg.com because of their quick shipping and access to a wide range of user opinions. A lot of people who buy from Newegg take the time to write their own opinion about particular products they've bought. You can easily access these user opinions by going to a product and click the Customer Reviews tab. Collectively these opinions are very valuable because you can quickly get the big picture on an item. If I'm seriously thinking about buying an item I usually skim all the customer reviews so I know the pro"s and con"s. That way when I pull the trigger and buy that item I know exactly when I'm getting.

Take a jaunt over to Newegg's hard drive section. This 500GB Western Digital drive costs $55.99 with free shipping. The customer reviews tell me that it's fast, silent, and cool to the touch. This looks like a good candidate for my next drive. The only thing it doesn"t come with are these cables.

Hope that helps everybody out. Good luck!

For more information on purchasing a computer, visit www.BuyaPC.org