Hard Drives

If you’re shopping for hard drives, The IT Bay has you covered whether you need internal hard drives for your PC or laptop, server hard drives , drives for a network storage device or external hard drives, perhaps for portable storage. All the hard drives you see listed below are physically in stock ready to ship straight away. Use the filters to narrow down the range by capacity, type, form factor or interface and if you’re not sure which type of hard drive you need, contact our team for advice.

When shopping for a hard drive, there are several key specs to consider before buying, such as storage capacity, form factor, interface type, cache and rotational speed. Storage capacity is an important factor as it decides how much data can be stored on the disk itself. Try to assess both your current and future storage needs when deciding which capacity drive(s) to purchase.

Lenovo - hard drive - 2 TB - SATA 6Gb/s
4XB7A77446

As low as £258.82 £310.58
Synology HAT5310 - hard drive - 8 TB - SATA 6Gb/s
HAT5310-8T

As low as £327.66 £393.19
Synology HAT5300 - hard drive - 4 TB - SATA 6Gb/s
HAT5300-4T

As low as £169.80 £203.76
HPE Enterprise - hard drive - 2.4 TB - SAS 12Gb/s
R0Q57A

As low as £290.00 £348.00
Dell - hard drive - 2 TB - SATA 6Gb/s
400-ATKJ

As low as £156.28 £187.54

Form factors refer to the physical size and shape of an internal storage device, such as a hard drive. The two main types of form factors used in modern computing are Large Form factor (LFF) or 3.5 inch and Small Form Factor (SFF) 2.5 inch although other sizes are also available too. Internal hard drives typically come in these two sizes and are used for PCs, laptops, servers and storage devices. Similarly, external hard drives also come in these two form factors, although they may also be slightly larger due to the casing which houses them. The type of device the hard drive will be used with often dictates what form factor should be chosen.

The interface determines the speed of data transfer between the hard drive and other components in a computer or storage device. Cache memory helps to improve overall performance by storing frequently accessed data for faster retrieval. Rotational speeds determine how quickly a hard drive can access stored information. The faster the speed, the quicker data can be read from and written to the hard drive.

Hard drives are often compared to solid state drives (SSDs), which use flash memory instead of moving parts for storage. Compared to hard disks, SSDs boast faster read/write speeds due to their lack of physical platters or heads. Additionally, SSDs are more reliable since they contain no moving parts and generate less heat. However, hard disks still have some advantages over SSDs; they usually offer larger capacity and better price per gigabyte of storage space. For this reason, hard drives are the preferred choice for storing large amounts of data in PCs, laptops and servers.

Hot-swappable hard drives, also known as hot-plug or hotswap, refer to a type of drive that can be removed from and connected to an electronic device without the need for manual restarting of that device. This allows users to replace failed or malfunctioning drives with new ones, thereby improving system performance and reducing downtime. Hot swappable hard drives are most commonly used in servers, workstations and network storage devices due to their high durability and cost effectiveness.