Selecting a hard drive for your gaming computer usually isn't a simple case of getting the biggest drive. Let's face it: a gaming machine is all about performance. It doesn't matter is you have several terabytes of disk space when your hard drive is slower than a snail (of course, it doesn't hurt to have terabytes of space).
IDE, SATA, or SCSI?
Almost every modern consumer hard drive will come with a SATA connection. IDE hard drives are a thing of the past, and if you run across one, chances are that its performance will not be up to par with more modern drives.
SCSI has been, and continues to be, the enterprise standard. SCSI drives aren't built for performance, per say, but for reliability and expandability. Don't let the significant price difference between SATA and SCSI drives fool you! Your gaming rig will be much better off with a SATA drive.
Motherboard Support
If you're following our How to Build a Gaming Computer guide, then you don't really need to worry about what your motherboard supports: all of the motherboards recommended in this guide support SATA.
If you're upgrading an older motherboard, you'll want to make sure that it supports SATA by verifying that it has a SATA connector on the board. If it doesn't, you'll need to upgrade your motherboard, or stick with an IDE hard drive.
SATA
SATA stands for Serial-ATA, and it's the industry standard for storage device connectivity. There is, officially, only one type of Serial-ATA, and it's called SATA; however, you may notice that there are several hard drives that label their SATA support in different ways.
SATA, SATA-I, SATA-150, SATA 1.5Gb/s are all names for the standard connector that you'll find on most drives.
SATA-II, SATA 300, SATA 3.0Gb/s are all a faster version of SATA, but are not official names for the faster speeds. They all basically mean the same thing: 3.0Gigabits/second of data transfer.
If you're following this guide, then don't worry: all of the recommended motherboards support this high-speed SATA interface.
RPM
The speed of a hard drive - how long it takes to access some portion of data - is generally represented in RPMs - Rotations per Minute. The higher the RPMs, the faster you'll be able to get to your data. Of course, the faster the hard drive, the more noise it puts out and the hotter it gets (we'll discuss heat and noise in another article).
Do RPMs really matter? Yes and no. If you're a serious gamer, you'll probably be able to notice the difference between 5400, 7200, and 10k RPM drives. Loading your operating system, games, and levels will certainly feel faster.
Ultimately it's up to you whether you get a 10k RPM drive or a 7200 RPM drive (5400 RPM drives are still sold, but gaming rigs deserve better). Just remember to decide if the increase in price for the faster drive is worth it.
Storage vs. Performance
A gaming computer is build for speed: the faster everything works, the faster you can frag your buddies; but, with hard drives, faster may not always be better.
Faster hard drives - those with great performance numbers - generally come with significantly lower storage capacities. Larger hard drives tend to offer lower performance numbers but significantly higher storage capacity. So what's a gamer to do?
Pure Performance
Some gamers choose to ignore disk size and instead go with pure performance numbers. After all, what's the point in having a super-fast machine when you can't do anything until all of the data is loaded?
This setup has the distinct advantage of being really fast - everything from the operating system to games loads in the blink of an eye.
The problem with this line of reasoning is that you'll quickly run out of hard drive space and be forced to uninstall a few applications before you're able to install another game. That's kind of a bummer, especially when the game takes up several gigabytes of space.
Pure Storage
Other gamers choose to scoff at hard disk speed and instead try to pack in as much storage space as possible into a computer. Their line of reasoning says that if they're going to have a gaming computer, they want to be able to play games on it and not waste time un/installing applications.
This is a great option if you want a massive amount of storage for everything. You'll be able to store all of your movies, music, and games on your computer and not have to worry about deleting anything.
The problem, of course, tends to be performance. Loading times skyrocket on these slower hard drives, and storing massive amounts of data tends to gunk of the system, which means you'll be spending a lot of time on housekeeping tasks, like a disk defrag.
Compromise
If you're like most gamers, you'll probably want to find a nice compromise between speed and storage. The trade off here? You won't be able to store as much data as the storage freak, or load it as quickly as the performance tweak.
Multiple Hard Drives
You're probably like most people and only have one hard drive in your computer. It can store, roughly, 500 Gigabytes of data, and holds everything from your operating system to your games. This setup is great for a gamer on a tight budget (or someone that really isn't concerned about performance), but the higher-end of the budget spectrum will probably want to invest in multiple hard drives.
Having multiple hard drives ensures a couple of things: separation of data and data integrity.
Separation of Data
By separating your operating system from your person data, you minimize the risk of losing everything when the time comes to upgrade or reinstall an operating system. This also means you can afford to invest in a smaller - yet faster - hard drive for your operating system (minimizing boot time) while investing in a larger hard drive for your data.
Data Integrity
It's a harsh reality to acknowledge: hard drives fail. By using multiple hard drives you can limit data loss. How you organize this is entirely up to you. Some gamers prefer a RAID array of drives which mirrors data, while others prefer to use individual drives to separate data types (music on one drive, movies on another, games on yet another).
By splitting up your data among multiple hard drives you gain the benefit of having a certain level of data integrity.
In Closing
Generally, hard drives are easy to pick - most of them offer the same features, speeds, and storage space. It's your hard drive configuration that will make the difference between the ultimate gaming rig and your average desktop.
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Recommended Hard Drive Configurations
Tight Budget
1x Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM 500GB - $109.99
Being on a tight budget, you don't want to break the bank on storage, nor do you want to break the bank on performance. This 7200RPM hard drive has more than enough storage for both your games and your data, and it's seek times are low enough so you won't be pulling out your hair waiting for a map to load.
Average Budget
1x Hitachi Deskstar 7200 RPM 80GB - $44.99
1x Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM 500GB - $109.99
This hard drive configuration will give you a good separation between data and operating system. By keeping your data on the larger drive, and your operating system on the smaller drive, you'll be able to install, upgrade, and reinstall operating systems without losing all of your installed data.
Big Budget
2x Western Digital Raptor 10k RPM 80GB - $289.99
4x Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM 1TB - $449.99
By placing the four 1TB hard drives in a RAID array, you'll have the ultimate in data integrity. There are also two 10k RPM hard drives in this configuration: one is dedicated to the operating system and swap file, while the other can be dedicated to your most often used files - such as games you play the most (this is an especially good option for you MMORPG players out there).
Back to the Build a Gaming Computer guide.
