Laptop Hard Drives

Welcome to the Laptop Hard Drives page, a hard drive is the storage device in the laptop that stores all of your data, this includes files that you have saved and software that you have installed. Most laptop users will not need a huge hard drive as most new laptops have hard drives that are large enough for general use as most documents that you save are very small, if however you wish to install allot of software and games or wish to download allot of large files such as MP3's or videos then you will want a large hard drive.

The hard drive of a laptop is usually assigned the drive latter of C: within Windows and this is because in the old days floppy disc drives and other drives took up the A: and B: drives. So when you look in the My Computer interface of Windows it may seem illogical that the first drive is the C: but this is nearly always the hard drive of the computer with your CD/DVD drive usually being the D:.

The size of a hard drive is measured in Gigabytes (GB) and a Gigabyte is made up of roughly 1000 Megabytes (MB). Typical sizes of hard drive that are often offered with laptops include 20GB, 30GB, 40GB and 60GB and if you want a large hard drive then you should look at 60GB and upwards as they can fill up very fast. Modern software and computer games can take up several Gigabytes to install so they require allot of space, MP3 and video files can also be large and if you download hundreds (or even thousands) of MP3's for your MP3 player then you are going to need a laptop with a large hard drive.

Quite often when you buy a laptop with a large hard drive you will notice that it is partitioned, this means that it is split into two or more separate drives in the Windows interface. This just makes it much easier to manage and is still one hard drive, it just appears like two hard drives in the Windows interface. If you have a partitioned hard drive on your laptop then it is best to install all of your software onto the second partition (usually the D:) so that you can keep the C: clear for more important files and system use.

Looking after your hard drive is also an important aspect of laptop maintenance as they can slow down over time. This is especially true if allot of software is installed over time as the hard drive can become clogged up with all kinds of applications that are not used, this is especially true if your family use the Internet allot as it s very easy for all kinds of rubbish to end up on your laptop from this. There are several steps that you can take though to keep your laptop's hard drive running smoothly and Windows has lots of tools included such as the Disk Cleanup and Disk Defragmenter tools. The Disk Cleanup removes files that you do not need and the Disk Defragmenter rearranges files so that they are easier for your computer to access and both of these should be ran regularly in order to keep the hard drive running smoothly. Spyware and other junk can also cause large problems so getting some anti spyware software is also very much recommended and there are free anti spyware programs available online (although ironically some spyware actually tricks users into thinking that it is removing spyware when it is in fact installing it so only trust software from brands such as Microsoft and Norton).

So buying a laptop with a large hard drive is generally a very good thing, even if you do not think that you will need a large hard drive it is always good to have it in case you need it and with modern software and games being so large and the advent of downloading MP3's and videos a large hard drive can be very useful indeed. So if you are looking to buy a laptop with a large hard drive then we have listed lots on the right which are from top computer shops, they all have at least 80GB of hard drive space so should offer ample room for your software and downloads. They are also listed with the cheapest first so it is easy to find and buy a cheap laptop with a large hard drive here.