SSDs vs. hard drives vs. hybrids: Which storage tech is right for you?

In times past, choosing the best PC storage option required merely selecting the highest-capacity hard drive one could afford. If only life were still so simple! The fairly recent rise of solid-state drives and hybrid drives (which mix standard hard drives with solid-state memory) have significantly altered the storage landscape, creating a cornucopia of confusing options for the everyday consumer.

Yes, selecting the best drive type for a particular need can be befuddling, but fear not: We’re here to help. Below, we explain the basic advantages and drawbacks for each of the most popular PC storage options available today. Tuck away this knowledge to make a fully informed decision the next time you're shopping for additional drive space.

What I Should Do If My Computer is Slow

*Empty Your Recycle Bin Regularly*

One important thing to remember is to empty your recycle bin/garbage can. Whenever you delete a file isn't actually deleted. It's stored in your recycle bin and saved in short term memory, using up RAM that your programs may need to run efficiently.

*Clean Unneeded Files Using the Windows Disk Cleanup Accessory*

Use the accessory that comes with most Windows operating systems called "Disk Cleanup". Go to the Start Button menu, choose Programs (or All Programs), Accessories, System Tools, Disk Cleanup.This program (shown to the right) will delete Temporary Internet Files, Downloaded Programs (which may have been installed, but the original downloaded file that is no longer needed is still taking up space), the Recycle Bin (garbage can), and Temporary files (files the computer saves automatically during some task, but which are not needed anymore). As you highlight each one, it will give you a quick explanation. This image shows what it says for Temporary Internet Files.

*Check For Operating System Critical Updates*

Verify manually that your operating system doesn't have any critical updates that need to be applied. Go to http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com and check for updates. Do this even if you think you have set your computer to apply updates automatically. This is a checkup, remember? You are doing it to make sure that nothing is wrong and one thing that could go wrong is your setting for automatic updates. This site automatically looks at your computer and then suggests high priority and optional updates specific to your operating system and your computer.

*Check Your Antivirus Software*

Check your antivirus software. Usually you can do that by clicking, double clicking, or right clicking on the little icon in the task tray. Check the date of the last virus definition file. If it has a red exclamation mark next to it is definitely out of date. Also if it isn't recent (within the last week) you probably don't have automatic updates turned on and should turn this feature on. (Automatic updates will update your virus definitions every time you connect to the Internet. Virus definitions are the files used by your antivirus software to prevent viruses.) Don't have antivirus software? Well then get some! Invest in some sort of Antivirus program like Norton Antivirus or McAfee VirusScan and update it regularly to prevent future problems and worries. A free and quick virusscan tool put out by McAfee is Stinger (http://vil.nai.com/vil/stinger/) . It will help with certain most common viurus types and is free. However they still recommend getting a full virusscan program.

*Run Defrag Regularly- especially after deleting lots of files.*

Defrag is a command that reorganizes your files. It is has the same effect as reorganizing your closet to use the space more efficiently after getting rid of a bunch of old things. Files are saved by the computer by breaking them down into little pieces (bytes) and saving these in lots of locations on your hard drive. When you delete files it leaves lots of little holes that aren't always used again. By running defrag you are pushing all the data together to fill in these holes, leaving more big empty spaces to fill later. This helps your computer run more efficiently as well, because these big empty spaces are utilized whenever a task takes more memory than you have in RAM (short term storage).

Before you begin Defrag, close all open programs, including e-mail, files, etc. and turn off your screensaver (click once on your desktop anywhere there are no icons, choose Properties, click on the Screen Saver tab, and click on the drop down arrow and choose None).

Disk Formatting

This article is made to answer our guest question when we discuss about What to Do If your Hard Drives Crashed.

Disk formatting is the process of preparing a hard disk or other storage medium for use, including setting up an empty file system.Large disks can be partitioned, divided into logical sections that are formatted with their own file systems. This is normally only done on hard disks because of the small sizes of other disk types, as well as compatibility issues.

There is two levels of disk formatting. There are low level formatting and high level formatting

LOW LEVEL FORMATTING

User instigated low-level formatting (LLF) of hard disks was common in the 1980s. Typically this involved setting up the MFM pattern on the disk, so that sectors of bytes could be successfully written to it. With the advent of RLL encoding, low-level formatting grew increasingly uncommon, and most modern hard disks are embedded systems, which are low-level formatted at the factory with the physical geometry dimensions and thus not subject to user intervention.

Early hard disks were quite similar to floppies, but low-level formatting was generally done by the BIOS rather than by the operating system. This process involved using the MS-DOS debug program to transfer control to a routine hidden at different addresses in different BIOSs.

Starting in the early 1990s, low-level formatting of hard drives became more complex as technology improved to:

* use RLL encoding,
* store a higher number of sectors on the longer outer tracks (traditionally, all tracks had the same number of sectors, as is still the case with floppy disks),
* encode track numbers into the disk surface to simplify hardware, and
* increase the mechanical speeds of the drive.

Rather than face ever-escalating difficulties with BIOS versioning, disk vendors started doing low-level formatting at the factory. Today, an end-user, in most cases, should never perform a low-level formatting of an IDE or ATA hard drive, and in fact it is often not possible to do so on modern hard drives outside of the factory.

HIGH LEVEL FORMATTING

High-level formatting is the process of setting up an empty file system on the disk, and installing a boot sector. This alone takes little time, and is sometimes referred to as a "quick format".

In addition, the entire disk may optionally be scanned for defects, which takes considerably longer, up to several hours on larger harddisks.

In the case of floppy disks, both high- and low-level formatting are customarily done in one pass by the software. In recent years, most floppies have shipped preformatted from the factory as DOS FAT12 floppies. It is possible to format them again to other formats, if necessary.