HDD 3.5

Storage Capacities

The variety of features caters to everyone from home users to businesses. The most common models on the market are:

Basic (1TB - 2TB): Suitable for everyday use, operating system, applications, and a medium collection of photos, music, and documents.

Mainstream (4TB - 8TB): The "sweet spot" for most users. Perfect for storing extensive game libraries, high-definition movies, full system backups, and for use in home NAS systems.

High Capacity (10TB - 22TB+): Designed for creative professionals (video and photo editing), data enthusiasts, enterprise servers, and robust backup systems that require maximum storage space.

Rotational Speeds (RPM)

The rotational speed of the platters (internal magnetic disks) is a critical factor for performance, directly influencing data read and write speeds.

5,400 RPM (Rotations Per Minute):

Features: Quieter, consumes less power, and generates less heat.

Intended Use: Ideal for secondary storage, data archiving, and for NAS storage units where silence and energy efficiency are prioritized over raw speed.

Average Transfer Speed: Approximately 100-150 MB/s.

7,200 RPM (Rotations Per Minute):

Features: The most common and widely adopted standard. Offers the best balance of performance, cost, and capacity.

Intended Use: Recommended for the primary drive (with the operating system and programs) in desktops, for gaming, and for most applications that require high performance.

Average Transfer Speed: Approximately 150-220 MB/s.

10,000 RPM and Higher (e.g., 15,000 RPM):

Features: Offers the maximum speed available in HDDs. They are significantly faster, but also more expensive, consume more power, and are noisier.

Intended Use: Enterprise market and high-performance servers where low latency is crucial. Today, they have been largely replaced by SSDs (Solid State Drives) in these scenarios.

Connection Interface (How it connects to the motherboard)

The interface determines the maximum theoretical communication speed between the HDD and the computer.

SATA III (SATA 6 Gb/s): The absolute and current standard for all 3.5" HDDs on the consumer market. It offers a theoretical transfer rate of up to 600 MB/s, which is higher than the maximum speed an HDD can achieve, meaning it is not a bottleneck.

Cache (Buffer Memory)

This is a small amount of fast memory (DRAM) integrated into the HDD, which acts as a temporary buffer for data that is about to be read or written. This helps improve response speed.

Common sizes: Range from 64 MB to 512 MB in high-capacity models. Generally, the larger the cache, the better the performance in certain tasks.

Summary of Practical Applications

For a High-Performance Gaming/Desktop PC: A 2TB to 4TB HDD, 7,200 RPM, and 256 MB cache is excellent as a secondary drive for storing games, media, and files, combined with an SSD for the system. Operational.

For a NAS (Network Attached Storage): Look for NAS-specific HDDs, typically 4TB to 12TB, 5,400 RPM or 7,200 RPM, and technologies optimized for 24/7 operation and reduced vibration (such as WD Red or Seagate IronWolf).

For Mass Storage/Backup: High-capacity models (8TB+) with 7,200 RPM offer the best value for storing large volumes of data securely and economically.