If you??™re serious about performance, get a more expensive
(and harder to find) 10,000 RPM (10k) or 15,000 RPM (15k) drive.
Buffer (measured in megabytes)
The buffer is memory (RAM) installed in the drive??™s circuitry that allows
it to accept data from your computer faster than it is able to physically
write to the disk surface, and to read data from the disk surface faster
when your PC isn??™t necessarily ready for it. A larger buffer is better;
don??™t settle for less than 8 megabytes.
262 | Chapter 5: Performance
MTBF (measured in hours)
It doesn??™t matter how fast a drive is if it dies on you. The higher the
MTBF??”Mean Time Between Failures??”the more reliable the drive is
supposed to be. Of course, this isn??™t a guarantee, but rather merely an
indicator of the market for which the drive was designed. Hard disks
designed for servers tend to have much higher MTBF ratings than the
low-end disks available on most computer-store shelves.
If you??™re buying a drive for use in a DVR(Digital Video
Recorder) or HTPC (Home Theater PC), it??™s also wise to
seek out the quietest drive you can find. Although manufacturers
offer very little in the way of useful, reliable noise data,
you can usually cull pretty good feedback from HTPC discussion
groups on the Web.
Aside from the specs, you??™ll also need to consider the interface, the connector
on the back of the drive that must match the drive controller and cable
already in your PC.
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