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Laptop hard drive
Every personal computer, laptop or desktop, needs a place to store files. In other words, it needs drives. The first order of business here is your hard drive – the permanent storage device inside your laptop.
The first question you need to answer is: big or little? Of course, to answer that question, you first need to define those two terms. In today’s acceptance of these notions, you can label as little a hard drive in the 20-30 gigabyte range, and as a big hard drive - one over 60 gigabytes.
If your laptop is your primary computing device, a big hard drive is probably in order. If it is just a companion to your stay-at-home desktop system, a smaller one might do.
That’s not the only important consideration, though. You also need to look at how you plan to use your laptop. For example, perhaps you plan to tote your entire 10,000-song MP3 library along with you for your entertainment pleasure. If that’s the case, you need a solid 50 gigabytes or so before you even add an operating system, much less other applications.
Digital video is an even bigger hard drive hog. If you plan on using your laptop in conjunction with your digital camcorder as part of a mobile digital video studio, you’re going to need the biggest hard drive you can find. In fact, if this is your plan, you may need to look at an external drive.
Another aspect worth considering is drive speed. Today’s laptop components are fast enough that a slow hard drive can indeed create a performance bottleneck. Look for drives that can spin at least 7,200 rpm.
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