Drives
In this article I will cover all the different drives you need for your computer. This includes hard drives, DVD drives/burners, Blu Ray, card readers and floppy disk drives.
Hard Drives
First up, hard drives. The primary decision you have to make here is how much storage do you want. The maximum capacity for one hard drive is 2TB (2,000GB). This is upto you and depends on your needs. You can also add a RAID set up which takes advantage of multiple hard drives with similar storage capacity. There are a number of different set ups for
RAID. The first is RAID 0 which requires two or more hard drives and it basically doubles the transfer rate of files by splitting the data between the two hard drives. The disadvantage being that if
one of the hard drives fails, you lose all your data. The second set up is RAID 1 which splits the data between two hard drives. It secures your data meaning that if one hard drive fails, the other will still have data on it. The disadvantage of course is you lose half of your hard drive capacity. Finally there is RAID 5 which offers the advantages of both RAID 0 and RAID 1 but requires at least three hard drives. The only disadvantage to this is of course the cost of buying so many hard drives. These are the various RAID setups. Hard drives ca come in two interfaces,
IDE and SATA. IDE is the older interface which uses a ribbon cable. while SATA uses a smaller black cable. SATA offers the advantage of having a much faster transfer rate. The newest interface SATAII is backwards compatible with older SATA hard drives but will not offer the fastest data transfer rates. This covers hard drives.
one of the hard drives fails, you lose all your data. The second set up is RAID 1 which splits the data between two hard drives. It secures your data meaning that if one hard drive fails, the other will still have data on it. The disadvantage of course is you lose half of your hard drive capacity. Finally there is RAID 5 which offers the advantages of both RAID 0 and RAID 1 but requires at least three hard drives. The only disadvantage to this is of course the cost of buying so many hard drives. These are the various RAID setups. Hard drives ca come in two interfaces,
IDE and SATA. IDE is the older interface which uses a ribbon cable. while SATA uses a smaller black cable. SATA offers the advantage of having a much faster transfer rate. The newest interface SATAII is backwards compatible with older SATA hard drives but will not offer the fastest data transfer rates. This covers hard drives.
5.25" Drives
Now I will cover 5.25" drives. These include CD,DVD and Blu Ray drives. When it comes to these, depending on your case and power supply and number of SATA ports, you can put quite a few drives in your computer. This leaves little limits to what you want to put on. You can have two
DVD burners to burn two disks at the same time or a DVD-ROM and DVD burner to copy disks from one burner to another. It makes it very easy. Both CD and DVD drives have burners available, the read-only versions are becoming scarce while burners can be picked up from AUD$35. The burning media is also quite cheap. Blu Ray on the other hand is quite expensive. Blu Ray burners cost around AUD$600 while a 25GB disk costs about AUD$50. This is really for only a
niche market for now. There are, like hard drives, two interfaces these drives can come in. IDE and SATA, where SATA has only recently appeared. IDE is still quite common for drives but it is limited as you can only put a maximum of 4 drives if your motherboard has 2 IDE ports. SATA allows you to have many more drives as motherboards can come with upto 10 SATA ports. Other things you can put in a 5.25" drive bay is a
fan controller to manually monitor temperatures and adjust fan speeds but unless you need to make your PC as cool as possible, it isn't necessary. It is more used by overclocker and gamers. Fan controllers will be covered in more detail in Accessories.
niche market for now. There are, like hard drives, two interfaces these drives can come in. IDE and SATA, where SATA has only recently appeared. IDE is still quite common for drives but it is limited as you can only put a maximum of 4 drives if your motherboard has 2 IDE ports. SATA allows you to have many more drives as motherboards can come with upto 10 SATA ports. Other things you can put in a 5.25" drive bay is a
fan controller to manually monitor temperatures and adjust fan speeds but unless you need to make your PC as cool as possible, it isn't necessary. It is more used by overclocker and gamers. Fan controllers will be covered in more detail in Accessories.
3.5" Drives
Finally, on to 3.5" drives. The external 3.5" drive bays are typically only used for card readers and floppy disk drives. Now, with Vista, the need for
floppy disk drives is completely eliminated, but if you still have floppy disks at home, you should probably put one in. Card readers come in many forms and a number of different qualities. Some come with 
inbuilt bluetooth and others come with USB ports if your case is missing them. Card readers are very handy for reading camera memory cards, it makes it easy to copy photos from your camera to your computer. Manufacturers are now only putting one 3.5" drive bay into cases now because people don't use them as much. 3.5" drives aren't really necessary to have but are handy when you do have them. Card readers can be bought from as little as AUD$15.
inbuilt bluetooth and others come with USB ports if your case is missing them. Card readers are very handy for reading camera memory cards, it makes it easy to copy photos from your camera to your computer. Manufacturers are now only putting one 3.5" drive bay into cases now because people don't use them as much. 3.5" drives aren't really necessary to have but are handy when you do have them. Card readers can be bought from as little as AUD$15.