Sunday, March 23, 2008

Hard Drives

A hard drive, or hard disk drive (HDD), is the storage device you use in your personal computer (PC). These are non-volatile storage devices used to store the data of your computermeaning you can be assured that whatever data is stored in these devices, it cannot easily be erased. However, there is no guarantee that your hdd would not encounter problems causing it to crash and causing you to eventually loose your data.

Inside the hdd, there are many mechanisms that move around to perform read and write functions. The hdd is made of rotating platters, commonly called disks. Each of these platters has a planar magnetic surface where the data is stored. This data is sent to a read-write head, which sends an electrical charge, executing the transaction. These moving parts and electrical charges could possibly cause the breakdown of your hdd, but manufacturers have already designed firmware into the hdd to allow more efficient scheduling of reads and writes if the hdd surface and the remapping of sectors of the disk fail. Also, hdd manufacturers have collaborated with motherboard makers in developing the Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology, or S.M.A.R.T., that can warn you of possible failures, allowing you to make necessary backups before data loss occurs.

An hdd is accessed with the following bus types: ATA (which includes IDE and EIDE), SATA, SCSI, SAS, FireWire (or IEEE 1394), usb and Fibre Channel. Aside from the connection, you have to select your hdd by the capacity, nowadays measured by gigabytes; the physical size, normally, if you are using a desktop, you would need a 3.5 hdd, whereas 2.5 is what you would use for a laptop; the reliability or the estimated number of uses before you hdd fails; speed or the number of reads and writes per second; power consumption; transfer rate; random access time; and the G-shock rating, which is very important if you plan to travel with your hdd a lot.

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Portable Air Conditioners Ensure Economy And Convenience

Small is beautiful and convenient and so is the portable air conditioner as it can be shifted from one place to the other very easily. Read on to find out all the other advantages.

With the onset of the damp weather, it becomes difficult to survive without constant central air conditioning but that can prove to be quite expensive. The answer to this problem is a portable air conditioner as it has many advantages. It is easy to shift from one place in the home to another and that makes a portable air conditioner the ideal cooling system solution for your home, office or industrial site.

The portable air conditioners are easy and quick to install, as they do not involve any lifting or tearing up of windowsills. Moreover it can be shifted very easily from one place in the home to the other. For taking care of the hot spots in the central air conditioning, the portable air conditioners are far more convenient than window air conditioners. It is also ideal for window shapes, which present problems for installation. There is nothing like portable air conditioners for use as a spot cooler in the home.

A portable air conditioner is an excellent choice for saving money as just one unit needs to be purchased and it can be shifted easily to where you need it as it is mounted on castors and some can weigh only about 36 pounds. Moreover, as only one room is cooled at a time instead of the whole house, the total energy consumption is very low as compared to other air conditioning systems.

Another advantage of portable air conditioners is the energy efficiency that they provide. The average efficiency is in the 8 to 10 range although some are as high as 15, which is 50 percent better than most older central air conditioners. The small size of the portable air conditioners is very advantageous and as such it can fit in a corner or against a wall. It functions like an effective dehumidifier if you do not vent the warm exhaust air out through a window and its size is also the same as that of a room dehumidifier.

In order to reduce humidity and allergies, even the small ones remove 35 pints of moisture per day from the room air. The portable air conditioners also use the heat-exchange principle as the other air conditioners to cool and dehumidify the air. The operating principle is also similar to a window air conditioner as the room air circulates over cold evaporator coils to cool and dehumidify it inside the unit. The room air is exhausted outdoor after flowing over the hot condenser. There is no chance of already-cooled indoor air escaping outside as two ducts are now used.

Nowadays, you have electronic controls in most models and you can set the desired room temperature, blower speed, start and stop timer, and operation mode (cool, dehumidify, heat). The portable air conditioners also have hand-held remote control with which you can conveniently change all the settings as per your need.

The other features of portable air conditioners include a built-in air cleaner with an optional charcoal filter and oscillating louvers to distribute the cool air throughout the room. You can also switch off the louvers to direct the flow of air towards yourself, if you so desire.

Get the right air conditioner the first time. discover the advantages of different air conditioner models and which one best suits your needs by reading our free articles at: Air Conditioner Reviews

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