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The Curious Bag
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IDE hard drives are what many people are used to looking for when buying a hard drive. IDE technology has increased significantly over the years and learning about the different measurements and benchmarks has helped users determine which drives are faster and better. With the advent of SATA drives, consumers are often left wondering how to compare the two technologies.
RPM
Hard drives are largely measured in speed by revolutions per minutes (RPM). This is the speed at which the internal platters spin. The faster the drives spin the faster the data transfers. Server hard drives spin at either 10,000 or 15,000 RPM, the average home computer hard drive spins at 7,500 RPM. Laptop computer hard drives are usually slower at about 4,200 RPM because of the energy required to power faster drives.
Technologies
The ATA hard drive was the standard for many years. ATA hard drives are also refered to as IDE drives or Ultra ATA drives. SATA drives have become more common over the last several years. The drives look the same, but SATA drives have seven wires as opposed to 40 wires on a ATA hard drive cable. SATA drives operate cooler and on higher bandwidths, which make for faster transfer rates. The best indicator of comparing speed between SATA and IDE drives is to look for the faster transfer rates in megabytes per second.
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