HDD capacity. Maximum capacity of HDD

A computer component such as a hard disk (HDD) has many features that you will find very useful for novice users. And advanced will not hurt. Now we will dwell in more detail on such a parameter as HDD capacity. Any PC user should know this. A little lower we will analyze what is the maximum, claimed and real capacity of HDD. And also we will describe the reasons why the size of the hard disk may decrease. Also now, SSDs are being distributed - solid-state storage media, in which there are no moving parts, as in the usual "hard". But so far the price for them is quite high, although there is a tendency to fall.

Maximum capacity of modern HDD

Once users were happy with "hard drives" with a capacity of 40 GB, but these times have already sunk into oblivion. The volume of modern HDD is now measured in terabytes. One terabyte is approximately 1000 gigabytes. Agree, this is a lot. But this is only at first glance. Gradually, HDD is "hammered" with movies and music, and places are sorely lacking. If you decide to build a new PC, it's worth paying close attention to the amount of HDD. Just in this case - "more is better". In our time, the maximum capacity of HDD available for purchase is 8 TB. With this parameter, you can easily download anything. A couple of such "hard drives" in the PC will allow you to forget about problems with free space for a long time. Of course, the price of these monsters is significantly different from the cost of budget "two-terabyte" (which is much more).

Some problems with old PCs

Owners of old PCs will be useful to learn that if they want to replace their old "Winchester" with anything larger, some problems may arise. The matter is that some old motherboards categorically refuse to support HDD in volume more than 138 Gbytes. This is due to a mistake popular for such boards BIOS Award. In this situation, you can try to update the BIOS. Award has long released a patch for this error. In any case, the throughput of the ATA interface will not be able to support a large capacity HDD (terabyte or higher). Here, you will need to replace the entire motherboard. And if you need to change the "motherboard", you will have to update all other components of the PC, including the case and the power supply. So it's easier to buy a new "sistemnik" right away.

HDD for laptops

With laptops it turns out not such an iridescent situation, as with the PC. Install a larger hard disk on the laptop, of course, you can. But you will not notice a special increase in free space. The fact is that at this stage the maximum HDD capacity for a laptop is only 2 TB. Motherboard mini-notebooks simply do not support those capacities that are available to PC users with full-sized "motherboards". Here, only the purchase of an external HDD can save. Of course, the speed of reading it is far from internal. But still there is no increase in free space.

Decrease HDD Capacity

For some reason, the maximum capacity of the hard disk may decrease with time. This is mainly due to external factors. Advocates of the popular myth that from the frequent formatting the amount of disk can decrease, are wrong. HDD capacity can only fall from physical impact. These include shock, a strong shake (only when working), a power surge from the power supply. Because of these factors, "broken" clusters appear on the surface of the disk. Of course, that the loss of volume was noticeable, it is necessary to "kill" a considerable number of them. But in this case the disk will just stop working. It can be thrown out, since it is impossible to "revive" such a device.

Declared and the actual amount of HDD

Manufacturers of hard drives usually proudly write on their devices the amount of storage space in whole numbers. However, the actual capacity of the HDD often differs from the claimed capacity. What is the reason for this?

First, manufacturers declare the maximum amount "by eye", guided by the fact that the table of the international measurement system 1 GB is 1 billion bytes. In fact, the gigabyte is 107 billion. The larger the maximum HDD capacity, the more "gigs" it lacks. For example, if you have a "hard drive" with a declared capacity of 200 GB, then its real capacity is 186 GB. And with this, nothing can be done. The measurement table is certified by GOST.

Secondly, each HDD has a system partition for recording debugging information. It also somewhat limits the maximum capacity of the HDD, though not much.

Conclusion

In general, the question of the maximum amount of hard disk is quite extensive and one article is not enough. Yet some common aspects have been considered. Now it is much easier to understand what the maximum volume depends on. Also, many were interested in the question of how the actual volume differs from the declared volume and for what reasons the capacity of the HDD may decrease. What are these reasons, we dismantled. Watch your HDD and everything with it will be in order until it "dies" by its death.