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In Depth: How to buy a new hard drive
27 AugTechRadar
If you're looking for a PC upgrade that will have a dramatic effect, then nothing will deliver quite such immediately obvious results as swapping a tired old hard drive for a modern, speedy replacement.
Boot times should fall dramatically, for instance. Your system startup is heavily dependent on your hard drive as Windows and your apps are loaded into RAM, and moving to a solid state drive could see your PC fire up in half the time that it does now.
Apps will launch more quickly, too. Anything that makes heavy use of the drive will run faster; you should find it easier to run multiple applications at the same time; and if you're currently short on hard drive space, then a 1TB drive (1,000 GB) could be yours from under £50.
There are a whole host of affordable hard drives around, too. Which one is best for you? It all depends on your needs.
Performance
If you'd like your new drive to be both spacious and fast then the best option is to buy a conventional hard drive. The capacity of whatever you're looking at will be plain, but performance is less obvious, however there are several indicators you can look for that will give you a general idea.
Mechanical hard drives store data on platters, for instance, circular discs that rotate at high speed. The quicker they spin, the faster the drive is likely to be. A few 3.5" desktop drives have spindle speeds of 5,400 rpm; most run at 7,200 rpm for better performance; some work at 10,000 rpm, usually delivering great speeds but at significantly higher cost.
Another factor is the "areal density" used by a drive, the amount of data it can squeeze onto a platter. The higher this is, the more data a drive can read or write for a given mechanical movement, and the faster it is likely to be.
To compare the areal density of drives, just check their specification and divide capacity by the number of platters. So most 2TB hard drives use four platters, for instance, 500GB per platter; but Samsung's new EcoGreen F4EG requires only three platters, each holding 667MB, giving it a natural performance advantage.
Hard drives will also have an amount of cache memory (typically 32MB although 64MB caches are becoming more common), where they store frequently required data. It's quicker to fetch information from cache than the platter, so the more memory a drive has, the better.
And every drive has a host of low-level statistics surrounding it, but a particularly important one to check is the seek time, the average time it takes for the drive heads to move to a required location. As with all of these comparisons, a lower seek time doesn't guarantee better performance - it's not as simple as that - but it will give you a general indicator of how fast the drive should be.
The 1TB Western Digital Caviar Black can be yours for under £70
Read our Western Digital Caviar Black review
The Western Digital Caviar Green is a conventional hard drive with a very exceptional capacity, an amazing 2TB
Read our Western Digital Caviar Green review
Solid State Drives
If performance is your absolute highest priority, then you may want to forget about old-style mechanical technology and buy a solid state drive (SSD), instead. This replaces the spinning platters with fast flash memory, which has all kinds of advantages.
There's no annoying seek-time delays, for example. A fast 7,200rpm drive might take 13ms to locate a particular item of data, but an SSD should be closer to 0.1ms.
Read and write speeds are also faster, though not to such a dramatic extent. (You probably won't see any real-life task run much more than twice the speed it did before.)
SSDs are also silent, generally use less power, and also run much cooler than hard drives, so you may find your system fan doesn't have to spin quite so hard, or often.
Sounds great, right? But there are problems. Flash memory is relatively expensive, which means SSDs typically have low capacities and high prices. You can buy a standard 1TB hard drive for under £50, for instance: a much smaller 120GB SSD will typically cost you £200 to £300, so perhaps six times the price.
And SSDs have shorter lives, too - the memory effectively wears out with repeated use. There are technologies to minimise this, and you shouldn't see any issues for years, but it's still a concern.
If you can afford one, though, a quality SSD is definitely worth buying. Install Windows and a few important applications on it, leave everything else on a regular hard drive and you'll still notice the difference - it's the perfect addition to a power PC.
To compare SSDs for performance, look for figures like maximum read and write speeds, maximum sustained write speeds, perhaps the number of IOPS (input/ output operations per second). SSDs are particularly prone to odd controller issues, though, so in-depth testing of a drive is essential to find out how it really behaves. Be sure to check out our hard drive reviews to discover which SSDs are worth every penny of their premium price.
The Kingston SSDNow V Series 30GB drives are relatively cheap, perfect for a RAID setup
Read our Kingston SSDNow V Series review
It's an incredibly fast SSD, but the OCZ Vertex 2 delivered only 120GB for a launch price of £264
Read our OCZ Vertex 2 review
Read our group test of the 12 best solid state drives
Interface issues
Whatever you're buying, it's important to consider the drive's interface, how it connects to your PC.
If your PC is a few years old then it may only support the IDE interface - bad news, as it's now obsolete. There are still a few compatible drives available, so an upgrade should be possible, but you won't be able to use the latest technology: IDE just isn't fast enough.
More modern PCs and drives use the speedier Serial ATA (SATA) interface, instead, but this comes in three main versions. The first (SATA I, or 150) could handle speeds of up to 1.5 Mbps; the second (SATA II, or SATA II), by far the most commonplace today, supports 3 Gbps; the very latest (SATA III, or SATA 600), appearing on many new motherboards, supports 6 Gbps.
If you have SATA 150 (check your system documentation), then you'll be able to connect drives using the other standards, but there's little point - you won't get the full performance benefit.
If you have SATA 300, like most people, then you've a huge amount of choice. Look for an SATA 300 or 600/ 6 Gbps drive that provides support for TRIM (a performance-boosting command built into Windows 7 and available in other tools) and native command queuing (a technology that optimises read/ write commands to improve speeds).
If you have SATA 600, then it still currently makes sense to use SATA 300 drives, especially of the regular mechanical variety. Most can't take any advantage of the extra 6 Gbps bandwidth.
Should you be looking at high-end SSDs, though, it may be a different story. They can deliver significant burst speeds and should benefit from the newer interface. Look for SSDs supporting SATA 6Gbps to allow the best possible performance, and check the controller, too: Marvell and SandForce controllers are some of the fastest around.
Powerful SandForce controllers help many OCZ SSDs to deliver the best possible performance
Read our OCZ Agility review
Crucial's RealSSD C300 128GB is so fast that it'll benefit from running on an SATA 6Gbps PC
Read our Crucial RealSSD C300 review
Comparison complications
Buying a hard drive on capacity alone is simple. As soon as you factor in performance, though, life becomes very much more complicated.
We've pointed you at some of the issues you need to consider, for instance, and they'll give you a general idea of how a drive will perform, but there are no guarantees.
Consider drive A, for instance: SATA 6 GBps, seek time of 13ms, 64MB cache. It should be faster than drive B, SATA 3 Gbps, seek time of 15 Mbps and a 32MB cache, right? But this won't always be the case, because there are all kinds of other issues, like the choice and implementation of the drive controller, that can't be compared in any simple way.
There's no substitute for reading the views of an expert who's tried out a drive in a variety of real-life situations, then, and that's exactly what you'll get on our review pages. So by all means use your own comparisons to produce a shortlist of likely drives, but after that, head off to our hard drive reviews section for the low-down on which models really deliver.
There are hundreds of drives out there - let our SSD reviews help you to identify the best deals
Seagate's Momentus XT 500GB is part mechanical drive, part SSD. How does it perform? Check our review
Read our Seagate Momentus XT 500GB review
Looking for an external drive? Read our group test of six 2TB monsters
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Eyeglass Frames- Select from a Wide Variety of Frames Available
27 AugArticlesBase
The eyeglass frames are made up of two types of raw materials, namely the metals and plastics. There are plethora of designs available in the online optical stores and buying from online stores will allow you to avail heavy discounts. -
Paper Planes
27 AugDailyCandy London
Helen Musselwhite Paper Sculptures
From Johnny Depp’s propensity to carve up hedges to the amazing new hair stylist who transformed your look, you’ve come to realize that scissors, in the right hands, are pretty powerful instruments.
Case in point: Helen Musselwhite, who creates beautiful sculptures and artwork for your walls using nothing but paper, a scalpel, and a good set of blades in her studio up north. Using patterned and metallic paper, or subtly textured sheets from Japan, she creates wonderlands by layering, scoring, slicing and then boxing them in pretty frames or Victorian glass domes.
She’ll make an owl that winks from the branches of a big oak tree, sparrows kissing on garden fences or tiny butterflies balancing on flower petals.
Musselwhite’s midcentury design love shows in ’60s pastels layered with darker arts and crafts colours, and heavy black-edged florals contrasting with wispy, curling fronds. If you haven’t been out of the city as much as you’d like this summer, escape into her landscapes.
Available online at thesecretarcade.com, £40-£800.
Photo: Courtesy of Helen Musselwhite
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RONNIE JAMES DIO To Be Honored At First-Ever CLASSIC GOLD MUSIC AWARDS
27 AugBLABBERMOUTH.NET
Legendary heavy metal vocalist Ronnie James Dio — best known for his work with BLACK SABBATH, RAINBOW and his own band DIO — will be posthumously honored at the first-ever Classic Gold Music Awards (CGMA), set to take place August 27-30 at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Hollywood, Florida. -
How I get dressed | Little Boots
27 Augwww.guardian.co.uk
Little Boots: the pop star on moving house to accommodate her shoe collection
I've always been a girly girl, not into typical things like pink and lace, but definitely dresses, heels and make-up. Whatever music I've been into has always resonated with what I wear. As a teenager I started getting into music: there was a tie-dye phase when I was into psychedelic bands, I wore black velvet when I was into heavy metal, and when the Spice Girls got big I ran out and got my platforms. My school in Lancashire was really strict – there wasn't a lot of leeway for us, but we did try. Make-up had to be pretty subtle or we'd be in detention. I used to be quite nerdy, and then at 16 I went to college and had the rebel years. I got sent home one day for wearing orange corduroy flares – a bad style move.
I've been wearing heels since I was 13, and after all these years I think my feet might have deformed into a heel shape. I'm a real sucker for shoes. I have shoes for stage and shoes that I try to save from the stage because they just get ruined. It's ridiculous: I had to move house recently because my shoes couldn't fit in my room any more.
I love my stage clothes – I feel like I get bigger when I put them on. I couldn't do a show without them. When I'm on tour I always go for clothes with effects, things that work well with the lights. The space-age, futuristic, glitzy vibe I'm known for is an expression of my music. Structural stuff works really well for stage too – big shoulders, for example, create a silhouette that looks good from a distance. You definitely have to think about practicality, which is annoying because it gets in the way of cool clothes. Finding new designers or people who have just graduated from fashion college is great – they always create really interesting things. I love Topshop and high street shops, but I want to go on stage wearing something out of this world. For a show it will take me about half an hour to do hair and make-up. I'll always include eyelashes with gems or feathers on, ones that fly out like a fan, like something a drag queen might wear.
I see a lot of sparkle in the audience at my gigs, and I really like that. Even if it's a weeknight people say: "I don't care – I'm going to see Little Boots; I'm going to get my sequins on." I like the idea of bringing a bit of glitter into their Monday night.
Little Boots' new single, Earthquake, and album, Hands, are out now
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds -
Inside a Nevada family's underwater fort
26 AugBoing Boing
It's amazing what you can accomplish when your dad's garage is full of useful parts and pieces, and your whole family is certified as scuba divers.
BB reader SaltySamaritan, aka Jordan Needham, dropped us a line via Submitterator to show off the dome-shaped, oxygen-filled underwater fort—nicknamed The Bubble Room—that he and his family built at the bottom of a Nevada mountain lake.
Made from an air-filled vinyl bladder, held in place by an intricate system of cabling connected to an octagonal frame of metal pipe, this amazing hideaway had me at, "Blurple burblup." I had to know more. Luckily, Jordan was kind enough to answer a few questions about how his family built The Bubble Room, the rules they follow to keep it safe and their plans for selling a commercial version.
Maggie: Where did this idea come from?
Jordan: I was in the shower, one day about four years ago, and I was just thinking about how cool it would be to have an underwater "fort" I wasn't sure how to make it happen at the time, but that's when the brainstorming started. So I called my brother Logan and we started talking about ways to do it.
Our original version was just a net stretched tight and secured to four rocks—one at each corner—and then a piece of plastic pulled under the net and an air bubble released into it from a scuba tank. Because the air is displacing water, the upward force of the bubble is equivalent to the downward force of the same volume of water on shore. So a bubble 10 cubic feet in volume would be basically 74.8 "gallons" of air at 8.35 lbs per gallon, which means a 10 cu. ft. bubble has 624.58 pounds of upward force! Pretty substantial.
Needless to say, by the time the bubble under the net was about the size of an average ice chest it had stretched almost 20 feet up to the surface then the net broke.Maggie: How did you make the working version?
Jordan: So, I started thinking about how to spread the load out around the perimeter of the net, and a better way to anchor it. That's where the idea for the "ring" came from. We no way to bend the super heavy pipe we had so I cut it and welded it back together into an octagon.
The ring is attached at three spots with stainless steel cable to three giant rocks, and we wrapped the cable around the bottom of the rocks and secured it back to itself with cable clamps. The ring is galvanized steel with 1/4 inch wall thickness. I also coated it inside and out with "sand" colored Rustoleum.
The ring, itself, is now a semi permanent fixture of the lake and has been down therefor about three years now.
To make the rest, we draped a piece of netting over a small dome tent and threaded a piece of climbing webbing through the bottom of it. We then attached loops of parachute cord to the webbing that were long enough to wrap around the ring and hook to a little nub welded every six inches along the top of the ring.
The dome is vinyl from the local fabric store. We switched from plastic because the plastic was kind of "cloudy" and the vinyl is optically clear. When The Bubble Room is not in use we take the net and vinyl with us and it is just a metal ring sitting on the lake bed. It takes one person about 15 minutes to attach the net and vinyl and fill it with air.
All the materials except for the vinyl where free!Maggie: Where is this thing set up?
Jordan:Well, I live in Reno NV, and let's just say it's in a local alpine lake. Even though it isn't hurting the lake at all and there are entire trains in the same lake, there are some pretty fanatical people "keeping the lake blue" and they probably would have a problem with my little addition.
When we set it up, it is usually an all-day event. We have had the bladder and net attached and it full of air for eight hour stretches before. But, like I said, when we leave we take the net and bladder with us and it's just a ring sitting on the sand. It would only be noticeable if you happened to snorkel right over the top of it.Maggie: Do local conditions make a difference on its stability?
Jordan: When it's super windy you can feel the surge of the water, even 20 feet down. With every wave that goes over the top, a little temporary cloud forms in the bubble, which is pretty cool. You get the same effect when you squeeze a two liter soda bottle that has a couple inches of water in it.
Maggie: How do you make this work as a fort? You have to refill the air occasionally, correct?
Jordan: Ya, we use a standard scuba tank to fill it, and replenish the air once it gets thin. A standard 68 cu. in. scuba tank will fill it almost twice. There are obvious safety concern with being in a bubble 20 feet down and all the oxygen being used up, so we try and play it safe—buddy system at all times, and when the air starts to get even a little thin we empty most of it and fill 'er back up with fresh air. [You can watch a video of "used" air being forced out of the bubble and up to the surface. --M]
Also, the air in the bubble is 1.5 times more dense than the air on the surface, because of the additional pressure, so it is a must to exhale on the way out of the bubble to the surface. The one lung full of air you breathe in down there would expand to 1.5 lung fulls on the way up, and ruptured lungs would ruin anybody's day.Jordan: One last thing, I hold a provisional patent on the idea and have adapted a version to be installed in a private pool, with a fresh air pump constantly feeding it with more air than the occupants could use. Some day I would like to try and make a little business out of it, and go around installing them in people's pools. You can't tell me Snoop Dog or a mob boss wouldn't want to have a little Bubble Room of their own!
Many thanks to Jordan and his family! Great work, guys. I am jealous of both your fort and your crystal-clear waters.
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10 Things Guitarists Should Know About The New Iron Maiden Album
26 AugTotal Guitar
Iron Maiden's first album in four years, 'The Final Frontier' entered the charts at number one this week, so we thought it high time we got a guitarist's perspective on things. We dispatched Joel McIver to find out more.
Iron Maiden – lest we forget, the biggest heavy metal band ever invented, with the arguable exception of Metallica – tend to do things big. Actually, scratch that – they do things huge. Nowhere is this tendency more evident than on their immense new album, 'The Final Frontier', released as you read this and showcasing the jaw-dropping guitar skills of three axe legends: Dave Murray, Janick Gers and Adrian Smith. If it's guitars you want, look no further – as Murray and Gers give TG 10 reasons why you too should step across the frontier...
1. 'The Final Frontier' was recorded by men on a mission
Murray: "We recorded it all in six weeks. In fact, we listened back to some stuff and we didn't remember playing it, because we'd recorded so much! It was great to go back to the Bahamas – the studio was the same as it was 25 years ago."
2. It's vintage Maiden – warts and all
Gers: "There's one song on the album where the timing is slightly lop-sided. It was meandering around the beat, so the producer put it in the correct time – and I really didn't like it, because it sounded clinical. I said, 'Put it back!'"
3. Fans of the 'Maiden gallop' will be in alternate-picking heaven
Murray: "We do a lot of songs with that traditional galloping thing, although there's not as much of it on the new album as there has been on recent albums. We're not purposely getting away from it, though."
4. Old-school is best…
Gers: "We were all in the same studio together. Bruce [Dickinson, singer] was in a vocal booth at the end of the room. We had these helicopter headphones made and you couldn't hear anything through them except the mix. That brought a lot of spontaneity to it."
5. …a philosophy that even applies to acoustic guitars
Murray: "There's a nice folkie bit of acoustic playing that Janick did. We've done some acoustic stuff live before, and we might well end up doing it on stage again sometime. Sitting on bar stools? Ha ha! I doubt it!"
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6. Modern technology played its part
Gers: "We put one of the longer songs together section by section, which was interesting. We did it that way because there was no way we could learn and record it all in one day! There were so many melodies there…"
7. Maiden: continuing to put the M in Metal
Murray: "On one song, 'Mother Of Mercy', we all tuned down to drop D – and it really leaped out with three guitars. It was pretty ominous-sounding when we were all playing in that tuning, and really different to what we'd done before."
8. Maiden always strive to be all they can be
Gers: "I'm never happy! I always think I can do a better solo. I tend to do several takes – six, seven or maybe more – so you can listen back and take certain bits. The computers are so precise now."
9. Be prepared for some surprises
Murray: "On 'The Man Who Would Be King', the intro and the vibe came off really good, and the rhythm section in the middle is really weird – and then at the end there's another bit that is pretty dramatic."
10. Blood, sweat and Fenders…
Gers: "My Strats might look battered, but my blood and sweat is in them. They have Seymour Duncan Hotrails and the Jeff Beck double-stacked pickups in there. I love the single-coil sound, but they pick up every taxi frequency there is!"
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Sign up for your free account nowThis week's news on heavy metal.
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In Depth: How to buy a new hard drive
27 AugTechRadar
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Eyeglass Frames- Select from a Wide Variety of Frames Available
27 AugArticlesBase
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Paper Planes
27 AugDailyCandy London
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RONNIE JAMES DIO To Be Honored At First-Ever CLASSIC GOLD MUSIC AWARDS
27 AugBLABBERMOUTH.NET
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How I get dressed | Little Boots
27 Augwww.guardian.co.uk
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Inside a Nevada family's underwater fort
26 AugBoing Boing
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10 Things Guitarists Should Know About The New Iron Maiden Album
26 AugTotal Guitar
