All of the hard disk drives we stock are from reputable manufacturers, rigorously tested and are of the highest quality. We know how important it is to keep the files that you care about safe, so pride ourselves on the reliability that our hard drives offer.

We stock a whole range of storage devices from Seagate. If you are looking to upgrade your computer's internal hard drive, consider the 1TB Seagate Barracuda, which boasts a fast 3GB/s data rate and, thanks to SATA Native Command Queuing (NCQ) technology, offers increased performance by organising incoming commands in the most efficient order. Alternatively, if you're after a portable external hard disk drive, try the 500GB Seagate GoFlex Satellite Hard Drive with Wireless Mobile Access, which allows you to carry your media with you wherever you go, and wirelessly stream to your iPad, iPhone or Android device.

We also stock a range of hard disk drives from Western Digital (WD). Boasting ultra-fast transfer rates, the WD passport disk drive range allows you to access and save files in super-fast speeds, thanks to its USB 3.0 port connection capabilities. Try the 500GB My Passport or 2TB My Passport, depending on the size you need, for super-reliable, super-speedy and super-portable data storage. Another stalwart of the Western Digital hard disk drive range is the WD Mybook series. Try the Essential MyBooks range for automatic and continuous backup of your own digital library, or consider WD HDDs that offer Live Personal Cloud Storage if you want network storage to back up and share media across a network of computers at home.

At Maplin, we stock hard disk drives ranging from 500GB to 4TB. To put that into context, there are 1024 gigabytes (GB) in one terabyte (TB). Below is a list of some different hard disk drive sizes, and what they will typically be able to store. Please note that these are estimations and will depend on individual file sizes.

• 500GB hard disk drive: up to 100,000 photos (at 3.5MB each), or up to 38 hours of video (25mps), or up to 125,000 songs (4 minute MP3s)
• 1TB hard disk drive: up to 200,000 photos, or up to 76 hours of video, or up to 250,000 songs
• 2TB hard disk drive: up to 400,000 photos, or up to 152 hours of video, or up to 500,000 songs
• 3TB hard disk drive: up to 600,000 photos, or up to 304 hours of video, or up to 1m songs

If you are running out of disk space, whether on your laptop or desktop computer, you have a number of options to choose from if you want to expand your storage.

An internal hard disk drive is fitted inside your computer. At Maplin, we stock a range of internal disk drives offering either IDE disk drive or SATA disk drive capabilities (the difference between them being that IDE drives use larger pin ribbons than SATA drives, while SATA drives are also designed to reduce the bottleneck between the components of your computer and therefore speed up data transfer).

An external hard disk drive offers extra storage in a different way. These usually connect to your computer via a USB port (hence their other common name: an external USB disk drive). A desktop hard drive is a type of external hard drive, which is designed to expand the storage capacity of your computer, without having to touch anything internally.

A portable hard disk drive is another type of external hard disk drive, which is designed to be easy to carry with you and is typically much smaller in physical size and weight than a desktop hard drive. These are often used as an external laptop hard disk drive, or by people who need to keep their files with them on the go.

A network disk drive, or network storage, allows you to back up and share photos, videos, documents and any other media over a network of computers. Perfect if you have more than one computer in your home that you want to share files between quickly and easily.

Choosing and properly installing any one of the above options will expand the hard drive on your PC. If you would like any more help or guidance, give us a call on 0844 557 6000.