EVERYTHING YOU WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT HARD DRIVES (BUT WERE AFRAID TO ASK)
By Keefy
(erm, well, not quite everything)
You’ve seen all the ad’s and glossy articles in the magazines. Have you ever thought of buying a hard drive? Maybe not. But if you are looking round, have you ever really thought about whether you need it or not? With this little article i will ATTEMPT! to help you by giving you a few fors and againsts.
First off, what exactly is a hard drive anyway? Sure, we know it’s a grey (usually) box that plugs into your ST. But what does it actually do, apart from take up valuable space on your desk?
A hard drive usually connects to the D.M.A. (direct memory access) port, and is basically a bigger, unfloppy and more complicated version of a floppy disk. The main difference being the amount of information they can store (although there are many more substantial differences). Most floppy disks can store about 1 megabyte of information, whereas hard drives start at around 20 megabytes and go up to 400 megabytes and beyond. The main reason the manufacturers give as a selling point is “they eliminate the need for all those floppies lying around the house”. Well, I’ve still got four boxes full of the little blue blighters!
One important thing to remember is SIZE. There’s no use buying a 20mb drive, because chances are you’ll very quickly run out of space and be pining after a bigger one. So, think about what you’re going to use it for and get one a size larger than you presently need – as you’ll probably need it later.
Another point worth noting is that it’s not much use buying a hard drive if all you use your ST for is playing games. Besides being a waste of an excellent computer, most games cannot be installed onto a hard drive, mainly because of the complicated write-protection routines and bootsector loaders. Hard drives are only really useful if you’re a serious user. For example, say you’re a Timeworks DTP user. Well instead of all that disk swapping and what-not, you can install Timeworks onto your drive along with all your fonts, clip-art, and word processed documents. No more disk swapping, and loading will be almost instant.
A hard drive is also especially useful when using STOS. You can store all your source code, accessories and extensions. It should now be much easier to locate that little sprite routine you wrote a couple of weeks ago.
As I mentioned a few lines ago, another of the advantages is speed. When you switch a hard drive on it revolves continuously, whereas floppies only move their butts when you tell them. Because the hard drive is always running, this means that the stuff you want can be found by the reading heads much quicker than as with floppies.
Another thing is that there are a few programs around that can use the hard drive as extra memory. Mainly musical programs, although I’ve yet to come across one of these programs, I have been told that they do it quite efficiently.
But it can’t all be good surely? There must be a few disadvantages? Well, there are a couple of things but they can usually be avoided. The first and biggest for me was the price. 20mb drives start at around £200, and the price continues to rise as the storage capacity increases. One point worth remembering is that they can be obtained much cheaper second hand. Many magazines carry adverts from people trying to sell them.The trouble with buying second hand is the risks. If you’re going to buy a drive costing £200 isn’t it probably worth spending a few quid on a coach ticket to check out the seller and his drive first before parting with my hard earned cash? This is what i did, I spent £8 on a return ticket to Nottingham, and when I arrived at the blokes house his wife answered the door, and apparently he had never even had a computer never mind a hard drive. So be careful, and remember it’s far better to waste a few quid on a bus journey than spend a couple of hundred on a useless or nonexistent piece of kit.
Another disadvantage is backing up your hard drive. It’s wise to back it up regularly and unless you’ve got some good software, it can be a bloody nightmare. Until i got TURTLE back up (a truly excellent P.D. program), I used to be tearing my hair out every day. Even so, backing up a hard drive can be very time consuming. Another problem I encountered was the formatting software. Before i could use
my drive, I had to format it (although I think most drives come ready formatted you will still probably want to reformat it to your own requirements).
Anyway the software i got with my drive was useless and extremely confusing. it was a couple of weeks before I had managed to borrow some decent software and get my drive up and running properly.
Well, I think that that’s about it, I think. Hope that I didn’t bore you too much. And remember if you choose your hard drive with the same excellent taste with which you bought your ST. You can’t go far wrong.
Oh and another point, if you buy it through a classified ad make sure it’s ST compatible first.
Here’s a few bits and bobs on a few of the more popular models,
REFERENCE 40 40MB £299 approx.
Simple to install—- No power switch
contact: Evesham Micro’s
Unit 9, St Richards rd,
Evesham, Worcs, WR11 6XJ
Tel:0386 765500
SERIES 900 40MB £329 approx.
Optional battery backed clock
write protect switch
power supply lead
utility disk supplied
contact: Power computing
Unit 8, Railton rd
Woburn rd ind est
Kempston, Bedford,
MK42 7PN
Tel: 0234 843388
DATAPULSE 52MB £369 approx.
Power supply –fast —Good software
Easily knocked power switch
contact: Ladbroke Computing International
33 ormskirk rd, Preston,
Lancs, PR1 2QP
Tel: 0772 203166
HUNTER CARNEGIE 70MB £399 approx.
Built in power supply—good software
NO BACK UP SOFTWARE –ready formatted
contact: Hunter business systems
unit 8 meadow mill
west hendersons wynd,
dundee
Tel: 0382 28245
* Prices correct at time of publication
