are all computer hard disk drives the same?

Answer 1

The answer to your question is "no, all the computer hard disk drives are not the same"

The main difference resides in the interface they use, wich determines the speed and the way they communicates with the motherboard of the computer, or the backplane, in the case of a server.

There are different hard drives, depending on the technology they use as interface, for example:
-IDE. Commonly used in desktop/home computers and small servers.
-SATA. Also very used in desktop/home computers and small servers. Some medium servers uses SATA technology too. These disk are generally bigger than the IDE ones.
- SCSI. Generally used in servers, because this technology is faster and much more reliable; but they are much more expensive than IDE or SATA disks.
- SAS. A new technology (Serial Attached SCSI). These drives are faster than SCSI, and they are as reliable as the SCSI are; but SAS are more expensive than SCSI. These drives are commonly used in High-End servers.

Hope this helps.

Answer 2

The answer could be simple or complicated depending on what you mean by "the same". Hard disks in modern PC's are the same in that they function the same way. They all have metal disks on the inside that spin while a disk head rearranges little magnetic bits that make up your data. However, they vary in capacity, speed and how they interface with the computer. The most common interfaces are IDE and SCSI. SCSI is the faster of the two and generally used in high end workstations and servers.

Answer 3

Not at all. There are fundamental differances between them, although they all act in roughly the same way.

First of all, HDDs come in many different "sizes"... for the most part they all are the same size on the outside, but the info that they can carry varies widely. You can get HDDs up to about 500 GB. That is more than enough for anyone who has a home or basic business computer. You'd likely never fill it up. You can use one as small as 10 GB, but it would fill up rather fast, considering that Win XP with SP2 is about 4 GB by itself. 120 GB is the average size in your newer PCs.

Then there is the speed difference. Some HDDs run at 5400 RPM, while others spin at 7200 and even some at 10,800. The faster it spins, the faster you can retrieve information from it.

There is also the connector type. Most use the E-IDE connector. It is about 2 1/2" wide, and two HDDs can be linked on one IDE cable. The newer models are using SATA connectors, which are about 3/4" wide, and can chain up to 16 devices on one cable. There are older connections called SCSI, "scuzzy" connections which can link up to 8. This type, however, is quickly becoming very outmoded.

There are also HDDs that are for the OUTSIDE of your pc. They are attatched by a USB cable or Firewire. They are great for cloning information onto new HDDs so that you don't have to go through the rigormarole of installing a new operating system and peripherals onto multiple machines, as well as backing up important information from your internal HDD.

I hope that answers your question. Good Luck to you.

Answer 4

No, there's the obvious differences such as the amount of information that the hard drive is able to store. But there are other differences such as the speed that the information is read off the hard drive. If you don't know already, a hard drive is usually comprised of a cased magnetized round disk, much like a CD-ROM. Some hard drives read information faster because they spin faster (also known has higher RPM - revolutions per minute)...

There is also different types such as SATA, RAID, and SCSI... but I guess you could Wikipedia those because I'm too lazy to look them up myself... lol.

Answer 5

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Answer 6

Desktops, Servers, Laptops all have different types of hard drives. There are IDE and SCSI hard drives. In IDE and SCSI, you have PATA and SATA drives.

Answer 7

Not at all. There are some hard drives with IDE connections and some have SATA connections

Answer 8

NO.
There are many type of HD, the NTSF,FAT32 and FAT
NTSF- Have ability to compress files to save disk space/and can encrypt files to prevent unauthorized use.
FATs- Older than NTSF, no ability to compress files or to encrypt file
The higher the value of storage, the higher the space you save.
See also at Microsoft website 4 more info

Answer 9

No.

more RPM means faster, more gigabytes (GB) equals more space.
more cache means a slight speed improvement.

sata and ide are interfaces, sata is newer and faster.

Answer 10

No, they are different sizes and speeds and interfaces.