Upgrading Your Harddrive? Why You Don’t Necessarily Need a Big One

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If you’re thinking of getting a new computer or upgrading your existing one then one of the big decisions you’ll have to make is whether or not to upgrade your hard drive and by how much. For a while this was a big deal and a couple of years ago computer manufacturers would proudly display the size of their harddrives alongside their display units just to show off how big they were. This was something of an ‘arms race’ in terms of computers just like we see phones showing off their cameras and their processors a lot these days.

Now though manufacturers tend to be a little quieter about their harddrives and this generally seems to be less of a priority.

Why Harddrives Aren’t Big News Any More

Why is that? Well, one reason is that harddrives have gotten to the kind of size where it’s actually ridiculous. Many drives are now in excess of 1TB and that’s actually more than you’d probably ever need. You’d have a hard time filling that all the way up and so anything bigger is really unnecessary. We’re getting to a similar point with phone hardware as well at the moment too – especially in terms of the processing power unless you’re very interested in high-end gaming.

At the same time, many harddrives are changing to SSD. Solid state harddrives work more like SD cards rather than CDs and this makes them quieter and much faster. Computers with these types of harddrives are quicker, lighter and far more suitable to being tablet convertibles like the Surface Pro. These sorts of devices are all the rage at the moment and for good reason. Arguing about harddrive size seems somewhat archaic now that SSD is more common (and they tend to be a little smaller).

Moreover, we’re also given a wealth of other options these days when it comes to where we want to store our files. You have the cloud of course, then you have SD drives and then you have memory pens and external drives. Each of these has their advantages and while some things will still need to go on your computer (like games), the rest is fine on an SD card or on the cloud. Some things are even better off here.

Why It’s Advantageous to Have a Smaller Harddrive

But all things equal, would you still choose a larger harddrive? If they were the same price, the same speed and the same in every other respect. Should you be looking for the biggest solid state hard drives for sale? Isn’t more space a better thing?

Not necessarily actually.

If you’re like most people, then right now your desktop will be just absolutely covered in icons so that you can barely see your lovingly chosen wallpaper. Likewise all your files and folders are the same. When was the last time you went through your ‘downloads’ folder? And when you’re looking for something, how easy is it to find it? If searches take you ages and if you can never find anything you want, wouldn’t it be better to keep your system a little cleaner and more organized?

If the answer is yes, then consider having a smaller harddrive and you will force yourself to do exactly that. You might struggle when installing lots of big files but if that means you actually delete the ones you aren’t using, then that’s for the better. Your computer will run faster and you will stay saner. What’s more, you’ll be more likely to actually use that DropBox account as it was intended and to backup some of your files.

So don’t look for the biggest harddrive you can. Size isn’t everything. Choose a computer with better specs instead, consider upgrading your harddrive to SSD and get an SD card or external harddrive for anything you don’t need on your system all the time. You’ll be glad you did!

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