A hard disk drive is a type of data storage device made up of hard disk platters, a spindle, read and write heads, read and write arms, electrical motors, and integrated electronics contained inside an airtight enclosure. These drives allow for permanant storage of programs and data.

The amount of space you need on your hard drive depends upon what applications (programs) you run and what kind of files you need to store on the laptops hard drive.

The standard measurement units are gigabytes, megabytes, kilobytes and bytes. Exact Conversion: 1,024 Byte = 1 Kilobyte (KB) 1,024 Kilobyte (KB) = 1 Megabyte (MB)1,073,741,824 Bytes = 1 Gigabyte (GB) 1 Gigabyte (GB) = 1,024 Megabyte (MB).

The version of Windows 98 S/E that on the Fujitsu 330E laptop (Pentium 233 MHz with a 3 GB Hard Drive) takes up 796 MB on the hard drive. This includes all the drivers and everything associated with the operating system, including the Windows Explorer Browser and the Outlook E-Mail Program. This leaves free 2.24 GB for programs and data files.

The latest version of Microsoft Excel requires 150 to 350 MB of available hard-disk space, as does Microsft Word. http://www.microsoft.com/office/word/prodinfo/sysreq.mspx. So, if you load the minimal amount needed and only use Microsoft Word you will need 150MB on your hard drive.

So, next you need to consider how much room your data requires on the hard drive:

A typewritten page or most text e-mail messages are 2-4 kilobytes (2-4 KB).
A short novel is 1 megabyte (1 MB).
A pickup truck filled with books (1 gigabyte GB ).
E-mail message (one page, text-only, no attachments): 3–5KB.
E-mail message Html (formating, fonts, one small image) message: 30-40KB.
Typical word processing doc (2–3 pages): 40-80KB.
Small (low resolution) jpg image: 20–30KB.
Typical mpg audio file (3 min.): 3Mb.
Small (2–3 min) QuickTime movie file: 2–3 Mb.

If you currently are using a desktop you can look to see how big the data files might be. You can use Windows Explorer to examine the size of data file found in c:/mydocuments if you are using a desktop. You can keep files to a minimum by deleting unwanted e-mail and SPAM. Photos can be large, so you could get an external hard drive to store them, instead of keeping them on the laptop. You can regularly delete the temporary files and make sure that any unwanted applications are removed if you don't use them.

So, if you are doing minimal word processing, sending e-mail and browsing web site a minimal 3 GB or 4GB hard drive may be adequite for your computing needs.