Dont worry, I am going to lead you step by step in determining what hard drive best suits your needs and your wallet. The first step to selecting a hard drive is to gather a bunch of information about yourself and the computer users in your household. This doesn't need to be written down, you can keep it in your head, but it might help to be able to organize your thoughts on paper. Gather information like the number of users that you would like to have, what software you want to install, the operating system you have, how long you want this hard drive to last, and how many partitions you will want to create. If you are confused about the partitions, check out my advice on that before you go any further.

Now that you have efficiently racked your brain and wasted enough paper to make your local recycling program happy, we are ready to proceed in assessing what hard drive you need.

First, determine what motherboard and type of connection you have. It would be pointless to go and buy a kick-butt hard drive and then find our that your computer will not support it. If you are unsure about what you currently have, reboot your computer and watch for the table that shows up before windows boots and there should be data on your hard drive that would say something about EIDE or IDE something. If all else fails, consult your user manual for the computer, if availible.

Next, we need to make the most important decision in selecting a hard drive, we need to determine the size of the hard drive you need. One note about this first: The manufacturers of hard drives print numbers on the boxes that are misleading. A box that claims to have a 15.3 GB hard drive will probably contain a capacity of about 14.5 GB or so when you check the size with a program in your computer. This is because a computer does not use a round 1000 byte sections they are rather 1024 bytes and so the number presented, while technically true, is misleading.

Ok, now that you understand the theory behind hard drive sizes, you can start to figure out just how big you want your hard drive to be. Start with a base size of the space your operating system will take up. Figure 1 Gig for fully installed windows 98. From there, determine the space utilities will take up on your computer. You might only want to add .5 gigs or you can add as many as 2 or 3 gigs to your estimate. Next, estimate how much space you will want for games. If you want to put on some of the newer games like Rainbow Six and Rogue Spear, you will want to add at least 2 or 3 gigs to your estimate. Rainbow Six in itself eats up over 600 megs in a full install due to video. Now you have to take into account multimedia considerations. If you want to have an MP3 bananza, you will probably want to add a gig or two to your estimates. Now add some space based on the number of users you will have. A good rule to follow for this is to add .5gigs to your estimate for each user you will have.

Now that you have figured out what type and the amount of space that you will need, figure out your speed. Your choices are 5400rpm and 7200 rpm the advantages are obvious, faster sequential read times at higher speeds. If you dont really need the speed (i.e. not a web server, file share computer, or multiplayer gaming system) then maybe you should consider foregoing the faster set of CDROMs.

Brand name is something that you will have to decide for yourself. Personally, i advocate western digital or maxtor because of the reliability that the larger hard drives can offer consumers. Reguardless of what the store clerk may tell you, more is not always better and the same goes for left. You will want to talk to some associates and see what kind of hard drive they have and how they like it. Yes brand can make a price difference but it also makes a quality and service difference.

Be wary of store personel. More often than not at the larger chain stores these are little more than stockpeople and/or cashiers on a floor rotation. Very seldom do I find one that can intellegently help me without blatantly pushing a product. If you need to, bring a magazine or a friend that can say something about hard drives.

You are now armed with a reasonable estimate of what you need for your computer. Selecting a hard drive is an investment, be careful at your choice and dont rush into things. Just because the package looks flashy and sexy doesn't mean that the hardware inside is just as good.