When shopping for a new hard drive, you should start by finding out exactly how much space you have on your current drive.
It is also useful to know other basic information, such as its file system formatting and rotation speed.
This article shows you how to find out these things.
(This article is written for Windows users.
) Find Out How Much Total Space and Free Space Are Available 1.
Move your mouse to the bottom left-hand corner of the screen and left-click on the round Windows button.
This will bring up a menu with two panels.
2.
On the right side of the Menu, click on the option "Computer.
" This will bring up a file browser that shows all the hard drives and other devices connected to your computer.
3.
Left-click once on any drive and you will see a display showing the total capacity and the amount of free space available.
4.
For further information, right-click on the drive name and select "Properties.
" The properties window will open.
Click on the "General" tab, which will show a graphical representation of the total space and free space available.
You can also see the type of file system formatting (for most Windows users, this will be NTFS).
Find Out the Transfer Speed of Your Drive 1.
Follow the steps outlined above to open the "Properties" window for the drive.
2.
Click on the "Hardware" tab.
You will see a list of the hardware devices connected to your computer.
3.
Locate your hard drive, which will be listed by manufacturer name and model.
You can look at the "Type" column if you need help identifying which is your hard drive.
Under the "Type" column, find the drive listed as "Disk Drives.
" 4.
Use the manufacturer name and model number to search in a search engine for information about your hard drive.
Look for something called Rotation Speed or RPM (Revolutions Per Minute).
Typical RPM numbers for hard drives are 5400 or 7200.
Be sure to check out total capacity and RPM information when shopping for your new hard drive.
These factors are critical for your efficiency and for the quality of your user experience in accomplishing your computer-based tasks like photo and video editing, music listening and categorizing, and even simple office tasks like word processing and presentation preparation.
There are few things more frustrating than running out of space in the middle of a video project or when trying to organize your music or photo collection.
Keep an eye on your available disk space.
If you start coming close to "maxing out," take a look at the options available for expanding our disk space and give your projects room to grow.
It is silly to be limited by disk capacity when there are so many good and inexpensive alternatives available on the market today.
In your work, you should be limited only by the bounds of your own creativity, not by disk capacity.