Hard Drive

Your hard drive is the part of your computer that stores all your programs and files. This is not to be confused with your computer's memory, which runs those stored programs. Hard drives are measured in gigabytes (GB). A new laptop will come with a hard drive that is somewhere between 20GB and 80GB. The sizes for desktop hard drives vary widely by manufacturer, but a new desktop will come with a hard drive that is anywhere from 40GB to 500GB. Media files such as movies and music take up more space on your hard drive than anything else, so if you have to store a lot of those files, you should opt for a computer with more hard drive space. You can also put additional hard drives in your computer (though this is not for the faint of heart) or get an external hard drive to increase your computer's storage capacity.