A hard drives is your memory, it remembers what you want it to, and it can give it back when you need it. If only we had these options when choosing a brain, some are slower then others. 

There are a few brands that are more popular then others
- Maxtor
- Western Digital
These are good reliable brands with excellent track records, I personally have a Maxtor, and it works like a dream.

There are a few factors in deciding what kind of hard drive you want. Speed is an important insure, the RPM, or Rounds (or revolutions) Per Minute, will decide the speed at which the hard drive spins. Access time is also very important. For larger hard drives, such, as 40 - 75 the most common is 5400, this is slow, and then take into consideration what you need 40 gigabytes for. 20 - 30 is enough for downloaded MP3's and movies. A hard drive with a 7200-RPM is ideal. 

Access Time, this is VERY IMPORTANT, the time it takes to find information on your hard drive, a very good access time would be 100mb/s, (megabytes per second). Then it would take a fraction of a second to full get what you're searching for. 66mps is an average access time. 

A hard drive is connected with an IDE interface. These cables are usually the widest of all the cables; they are thing and usually gray. There are many plugs on the cord, and the hard drive can be plugged into any of them. (See Motherboard for the speed of your bus.) 

There are some new features of hard drives, the most common on Western Digital drives, is DataLifeGuard, this feature keeps your data safe from most hard drive problems. 

A high-end hard drive will run about, 200 - 250 American dollars. These drives would be in the area of 60 gigabytes and up. A low to mid type drive would run about 75 - 200 drives. This would range is size from 15 - 60 gigabytes. 

Purchasing on the east coast of the United States, 
- www.bestbuy.com
- www.circuitcity.com
- www.wiz.com