wow HD's are cheap!

oh my god! :eek: i never realised HD's were THAT cheap!!! i mean i knew they were cheap but i thought it was about 100quid for a 120gb. well i can see i was wrong;
http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/produ...t_uid=4&stid=2
i have a nearly full 120gb HD at the mo and need a new one. These look to be my 2 fav choices;
http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/produ...duct_uid=40965
http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/produ...duct_uid=36369
as you may notice it's almost no extra for a 120gb over an 80gb one. so here’s the deal, why so cheap? the only HD i currently have is SATA and quite fast (how fast i can't remember) so i will keep on using that one for all the applications i use day to day and games. i only need another one to store music, data etc that i don't use to much. so even though they probably have crap specs etc, i only want storage and it won't effect the speed and performance of my comp will it? also how reliable are they?
so in other words what’s the bad thing about these HD's and which one should i go for?

I would go for a Seagate SATA.

First off, I've had issues with PC's that are running one Parallel ATA and one Serial ATA hard drive. I have an early SATA motherboard in my home PC; before I got a UPS, I had to go into the BIOS every time the power went out to set the SATA drive as the boot disk.

Second.... even if you're only storing on backing up files, you'll be much happier with the speed of the SATA.

Last.... Three Words: FIVE YEAR WARRANTY. Seagate puts a five year warranty on their hard drives. Except for the 10,000 RPM Raptor drives, Western Digitals either have a three year or one year warranty. As for the Maxtor's, I've seen so many of those die that I don't even consider them when building or upgrading a system.

One reason they are inexpensive is because they have only a 2mb buffer cache; they are quickly phasing out -- retailers are probably eager to dump their stock. They're fine for basic replacement drives and are quite affordable, but if you are trying to upgrade performance of the machine, then the 8mb buffer hard drives that are out now perform better. However.....most average users probably will not be able to tell "naked-eye wise" the difference between a hard drive that has a 2mb and one that has an 8mb buffer.

And the new 16mb buffered ones are a tad more expensive.

Boy....I hate it when they go a tad more expensive, don't you? :D

I use nothing but SATA Raptors on my system now and am very impressed with their performance (I keep the external IDE drive disconnected pretty much all the time). Highly recommend SATA.
I also agree with Train regarding Maxtors...found them to be noisier also.

well as i said i want it purely for storage purposes and don't care about the performance as i won't be using it that much. From reading the reviews on the site many of the Maxtor's seem to end up dead. So i found another good one;
http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/produ...duct_uid=52159
it's a Seagate so it should be reliable and as an added bonus has 8mb buffer. also is 120gb so i shouldn't fill that for a bit.
Also i was under the impression you just plugged the new HD in and bob's you uncle all is good. is this true? And will i need any adapters or extra wires that aren’t provided?

You will need to partition and format that hdd.
But with XP it can be done from windows.
This link explains how to do that.
http://support.microsoft.com/default...309000&sd=tech

Glad you noticed the problem with Maxtor, and I add to that list all 80GB hdds no matter who makes them. Seagate and Western digital, except for the 80's, have done well for me over the years.

If it is the only IDE hard drive, then all you need is an 80-wire ATA ribbon cable (one may be included with the hard drive). Mount the drive in a bay and connect it to the Primary IDE connection on the mobo. It should already be jumpered for Master at the factory....since it is the only drive on that channel it should remain as a "Master". Your CD-ROM can be connected to the Secondary IDE connector (also remain jumpered as "Master").

A simple guide

there doesn’t seem to be a picture of a person with something flying over there head available :) . would be very useful for this site! lol. Well as far as fitting goes i will just do what i always do, buy it and fiddle around for a few hours inside my PC until it works. and what the hell is formatting and partitions? Come across it before but never had to do anything to a HD before to make it work

Formatting is basically wiping the drive, and needs to be done under specific file system for example using XP as it uses a different file system to previous operating systems it must be formatted under NTFS system for it to be recognised by the OS, and partitioning is when you make chunks on the drive like dividing a cake into manageable slices, so if you say that you want a slice of hard drive for videos you can create one and this is called a partition.

Definitions incase i don't make sense:

FORMATTING: To operate properly new disks must be formatted. Disks are organized as a series of compartments, called sectors, into which information is written and from which it is recalled. When you first take a new disk there is nothing at all recorded on it and before it amy be used, the sectors must be magnetically marked out on the surface of the disk. This is called formatting. It is analogous to drawing lines on a piece of paper before writing on it.


PARTITIONING: Hard disk drive partitioning is the creation of logical divisions upon a hard disk that allows one to apply operating system-specific logical formatting......SOURCE

Hope that clears it up for you.


Liam

ok cheers for that. so i will need to format for windows to use it. But as i see i don't NEED to use a partition, is that true? Also if the drive is unformatted will XP recognise it and allow me to format it?

All disks have to be partitioned, whether you use one partition that's the full size of the drive or several smaller partitions. Windows will recognise the drive in Administrative Tools>Computer Management>Disk Management, where you can partition and format the drive, but you won't see the drive in Windows Explorer until that is done.

BTW, Choose an "Extended" partition rather than a "Primary" partition, or your drive letters will get mixed up.

To add to SuperSparks' reply,


This link will help you to use disk management to complete the process.

And this link will help you to perform the process using your XP CD, as SS said, choose extended not primary as the partition type.


Liam

Check your primary drive first (the SATA drive) and see if it is formatted to NTFS or FAT32. Make sure you match the format for the new drive. Windows XP works best with NTFS.

my current HD is NTFS and my ipod is FAT35. well cheers for all the advice, cause if you hadn't told me i would have probably spend days trying to fix it.
P.S. bistro, love your occupation :) any chance you could get me the same job ;)