Hard Drive

The hard drive is the device on your computer that holds all of the programs and data that you have stored. You're O/S (Operating System) is stored on your hard drive. Any games, music, pictures, documents, ect... are stored on the hard drive.

Basically your hard drive is a set of disks a little smaller than a CD.Inside of a small metal box. Your Operating System is the first thing to get put on the hard drive. Usually this is done at the factory before you receive your computer. I'm not going to go into Operating Systems in this article but I just wanted you to understand what type of information is kept on the hard drive.

Many people have more than one hard drive inside there computer. It is also very common for individuals to have what is known as an external hard drive. Usually kept for backing up information in the very common event that Windows (The most common operating system) messes up and needs to be reloaded, which results in all of the information on the main hard drive inside of the computer being lost.

One thing that many individuals who are looking to purchase a computer get confused about is the difference between memory and the size of there hard drive. Without going into to many details just know that when the ad says a computer has 2 gigs of memory. That is something completely different and has nothing to do with how much storage space you have on the computer for your pictures and music ect... The size of your hard drive will be stated as something like (250 gig HD) Sometimes they will spell out hard drive but many times you will see it just called an HD. Bigger is not always better. Most people never use all of the space on there hard drive anyway and if you do find that you're filling it up at some point down the road, it is pretty cheap to add a second especially if you know someone who can put it in for you or if you put it in yourself. The point I'm trying to make is that if you are shopping for a computer do not spend a lot more money simply because one computer or the other has a larger hard drive. In almost every case it is not worth it.