Hard Drive Size - Why It's important

The hard drive disk of a computer is the customary storage gismo of the computer. It is a non-removable gismo that retains all the information when the computer is turned off. A fast hard drive supplies the computer with data as fast as it needs. Hard drives are measured in Gigabytes (Gb) and the larger the number, the more storage the computer has. When finding at purchasing a new home computer or laptop, it is important to understand how the hard drive works with your computer and how much storage capacity you will need.

When recovery information on your computer, the application is recorded on a magnetic platter inside the hard drive. Most hard drives have some platters that allow them to spin up to 15,000 times per minute. The amount of hard drive space the computer has will sway how much data that can be saved. The data on a hard drive can be deleted or erased from the memory at any time and does not need a constant power contribute to save the information.

External Hard Drives

It used to be that hard drives were small and had a capacity of no more than 5 Mb, now most new computers and laptops have no less than 40 Gb. Some hard drive capacities can exceed 120 Gb. Today, computers with these capabilities can store a weighty amount of information, videos and photos without getting bogged down.

Hard Drive Size - Why It's important

Choosing a hard drive can be confusing if you are not well-known with what to look for. Hard drives can have a very high capacity and they can be very small. It is important when finding at hard drive for your computer or laptop to know what you need. Carrying out in a hard drive can vary dramatically. There is nothing more frustrating than trying to save information and studying your hard drive is full. If you plan on using your hard drive to store a minimum amount of information, you may not need to spend the extra money on a bigger hard drive.

For storing large files, videos, music and pictures, your computer will need to be equipped with a larger amount of hard drive space. You can buy 160 Gb and bigger of hard drive space on most computers. The normal rule of thumb for purchasing hard drive space is to buy the largest amount of space you think you will need and that you can afford.

Price is someone else factor when choosing the right hard drive size. The most base size of hard drive for the money ranges from 60 to 80 gigabytes. These hard drive sizes are readily ready on most operating systems. They are a good prudent option for computer users needing the computer for daily storage and use.

Besides the size of the hard drive and buy price reconsider way times and replacement rates when finding at hard drives. The replacement rate is how much data can be transferred per second. This can vary though, depending on the health of the computer. A computer that is nearly full may have a much slower replacement rate.

Transfer rates come in either internal or external. The internal replacement rate is how fast the hard drive can read the date. The external replacement rate is how fast the drive can speed data to whatever it is linked to. Usually, the replacement rate will be a wee slower than listed, so it is best to get a faster replacement rate. The external rate is link to the type of hard drive that the computer is using.

Be aware that hard drive speed is sway by the computer's capabilities. If your computer is slow, a bigger and faster hard drive will do you wee good. Also, if your computer is operating slowly, a bogged down hard drive may be the problem. If your computer law is running slow, deleting unnecessary files from the hard drive. Defrag is someone else option used to optimize slow hard drive systems.

Fragmentation of the hard drive occurs when the operating law breaks a saved file into cut off pieces and shop them in other places. This usually happens when there is not sufficient room to store all the date. Defrag takes those stored file fragments and pieces them back together again. The process can be time consuming, but is a good way to optimize hard drive space and the speed of the computer.

Hard Drive Size - Why It's important

How to access Your Multimedia collection From everywhere in the World

Recently I have been curious my media collection into the 21st century. What does that mean? Well, I'll tell you what it means to me. It means I should be able to for real entrance my entire collection from everywhere in the world and with ease.

So how does one do this?

External Hard Drives

With an speculation of time and some money for sure, but the outcome is awesome! You will need the following:

How to access Your Multimedia collection From everywhere in the World

1.) A computer with A Lot of storage
2.) Move all your media to a digital format on your computer hard drive
3.) A high-speed Internet connection
4.) A laptop, iPhone, iPad, or any movable smartphone device
5.) A configurable router to enable a remote connection
6.) Some software for your computer and smartphone (I went straight through and reviewed quite a few and my final decision was to stick with ServeToMe/StreamToMe).

The outcome of all this will follow in our very own YouTube, Google Video, Picasa Web, and Hulu all in one. You will generate your own personal media cloud!

Step One - a computer with A Lot of storage

I recommend a desktop Pc that you can just leave somewhere turned on with all your media loaded up on it. A laptop can be used as well, but getting the storage we need, will probably mean purchasing external Hd cases and that just gets too messy. A nice tall desktop engine with bays to hold our Hd's works best. So if you already have a desktop engine go buy yourself a nice 2Tb drive. 2Tb is equal to 2000Gb. This should be sufficient to hold all your media files. These drives are very cheap nowadays (2011), going for approximately 60-80 Usd.

Step Two - Digitizing your media

We need to move all our media onto our computer. I'm sure most of you already have iTunes music, videos, and photos on your hard drives. So you are probably already half way done. Now you want to take all your Dvds, Cds, and any other media that you have that is Not on your computer and copy it to your computer's hard drive. You can download free software that will rip your Dvds and Cds. If you have old family videos on Vhs tapes, this is a bit more of a challenge but can assuredly be done, and I very recommend it! You will wish you had digitized those Vhs tapes later in life when you can no longer watch them. I'm not going to go over this stuff in this write up, but you can Google crusade ways to get your media onto your computer. There are just too many options to go over in this article. Once you get all your media onto your computer, you will want to spend some time to organize and categorize it so that it's easy to navigate. Also clean up file names, etc. Let's assume you have completed this and move on to step 3.

Step Three - An Internet connection

We will want a high-speed reliable Internet relationship so that we can entrance our media everywhere we go. Get one, although I'm pretty sure you already have one, just make sure it's a fast connection.

Step Four - A movable expedient or laptop to entrance your collection

Any modern smartphone will probably do (iPhone or Android recommended). For the purpose of this article, I will be using my iPhone.

Step Five - Configure your router

In order to entrance your media remotely you will need to use software on your computer and enable that software to delineate straight through your router. This is where things get a limited technical and you will need to know how to setup port forwarding on your router. This is not as difficult as it sounds. You can for real find tutorials online on how to do this as well as in your router's education manual. Most software will delineate on definite ports and once you open those ports, transportation can occur between your computer and your movable expedient (through your router). If you don't open these ports your router (who is between you and your computer) will block the communication.

You will want to use Wol (wake on Lan) to send a Wol packet to your computer to remotely turn on your computer. This way you can for real turn on/off your computer and entrance your media anytime you want.

It gets a bit technical and if you don't want to worry about this, there is an easy solution...just leave your computer on 24/7. I like the Wol because this allows me to leave my Pc off when it's not needed and then turn if on with the click of a button, regardless where I am in the world. I recommend a free iPhone app called iWake. All you need to do is configure your router to allow transportation on Udp port 9 to the broadcast Ip address (i.e. 192.168.1.255) and then you can send that wake up magic packet.

You just setup the iWake iPhone app. Then furnish it with your global Ip address and your computer's Mac address...and viola you're done. Now just click on your computer in the app, and within seconds your Pc at home will turn on. Awesome right?

Step Six - Configuring your software to entrance your media

So I went and tried out a few of the iPhone app/media servers ready in iTunes. I tried the following:

Orb
Air Video
StreamToMe/ServeToMe

Here are my findings:

Orb was bloated, glitchy, and their iPhone app was 10 Usd. Why is it always the associates that look big and legit always have the most costly and buggy software on iTunes?

Air Video was nice and easy to setup. They have a paid version and a free version. The free version is useless for normal use, but good sufficient to test out the software and their media server (limits you to only a few video files). The interface was Oooookay, StreamToMe blows them out of the water, but my main qoute with Air Video was that it only supports video files?!?! Why!?!? Why bother production any media software these days if they can't deal with our music, videos, and pictures? Stay on the bench if you don't plan to play the right way.

StreamToMe turned out to be the best software. The iPhone app is beautiful and it loads your folders (even those with hundreds of items) promptly and the video thumbnails load very fast as well. This is all over my Dsl relationship for my Pc and my 3G network for my iPhone. My computer is a Intel Core 2 Duo so it can render the video files fairly quickly. But I was impressed how fast the videos started after clicking on them. It only takes 2-3 seconds from clicking on the video file to it for real playing. Which is for real impressive!

The server software (ServeToMe) is completely free and very easy to setup. It's basically just one window that allows you to add media folders that you want to share and tells you what port it's communicating on. So you just need to configure your router to forward that port to your computer and you should be all set. It also gives you the selection of setting your own port to use (I recommend this so that others don't know what you are using, always good to Not use the default ports applications use) as well as a username and password to entrance your media library (definitely do this!)

So once I got the server setup, then it was time to download the iPhone app, which is called StreamToMe. This app is sold in the iTunes store for 2.99 Usd. Just load it up and then click edit to add your media server. You'll need to put in your global Ip address and the port you configured on the server. Odds are your global Ip address is always changing and you will want to setup a Dynamic Dns service. Check out my write up on how to do this on my blog site.

After you get the relationship details added, click on the server to connect, and it will prompt you for your username/password. Then once your credentials are confirmed you will see all your media folders you added to the server. Then you can browse straight through and click on any of your files to play. That's it! Now you have your entire media collection at your disposal everywhere and at Anytime. Isn't that cool!

I was waiting for my wife the other day at the train center and got bored. So I opened up my iPhone app "iWake", turned on my computer with the app, then opened up StreamToMe and started watching an episode of Cheers!

Gotta love technology!

*** Note one thing about my setup. I am able to remotely turn on my Pc with my iPhone app and then immediately entrance my media collection straight through the StreamToMe app. This is potential because I have setup the ServeToMe software to automatically start when Windows boots up (prior to a having a user logon). As far as I know, the ServeToMe can only run when the user logs in. You can get colse to this by setting up a task in Windows Task Scheduler to inaugurate upon Windows start up. How to do this is for real a tutorial in itself. If you would like to know how, please check out my Author Bio.

Another software that I saw some citizen delineate was Remote Potato, but because it had a 7$ price tag versus a 3$ one like StreamToMe, I tested out StreamToMe first. And since StreamToMe did all things I needed...flawlessly, I didn't bother to mess with Remote Potato. Guidance to app developers, always have a free version, especially with something like this, at least then citizen will give your app a try and see if it's something they like. Software makers have always given out demo versions, and with unintelligent Apple's policy of All Sales Are Final, you need this demo/free version more now than ever.

I hope you found this narrative helpful in setting up your entrance Anywhere/Anytime media server!! I love the fact that I can be relaxing on a beach everywhere in the world and have the potential to turn on my computer and fire up an old movie, family video, tv show, or photo album...all with a few taps of my iPhone.

Written by Josh R Bellendir, 2/27/2011
Check out http://jbellendir.com for more articles, stories, tutorials, and reviews!

How to access Your Multimedia collection From everywhere in the World