Laptop Hard Drives

A laptop hard disk drive (HDD) is a slimmed-down version of a PC HDD. It measures 2.5 inches across and functions exactly like a PC hard drive. It is removed and installed by access panels and usually has a couple of screws that discourage end-user techie ambitions. Almost all laptop hard drives today are Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA), and some are external storage devices that connect thought USB or FireWire. Other laptop storage devices and external attachments include ExpressCards, PC cards, and PCMCIA.

Solid-state drives (SSD) are essentially drop proof. Rated at thousands of gravities (the amount of force exerted on an object), they are simply not going to break like the spinning platters and moving arms of the traditional HDD sometimes do. This explains the survivability of flash drives and MP3 players that use such technology. It comes at a cost. The media can be rewritten only a finite number of times. You really do not need to defrag an SSD because of the solid-state nature. Regardless of fragmentation, the drive accesses it about the same as if it were completely contiguous. More, those countless reads and writes by defrag greatly age an SSD.