Hard rive replacement help
- Thread starter MarineCorps
- Start date
Do I need to buy two of 
Crazy Eddie
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Any IDE hard disk will be Ok as a replacement, and you don't need more than one. The 5.25 "bigfoot" devices were just a passing fad, they're all 3.5 again now.
I would certainly recomend buying something larger than 40GB though, they're *very* poor value for money. For less than twice the price of the two you've linked to, you can buy a 160GB HD, even an 80GB will only cost a few bucks more.
I would certainly recomend buying something larger than 40GB though, they're *very* poor value for money. For less than twice the price of the two you've linked to, you can buy a 160GB HD, even an 80GB will only cost a few bucks more.
You'll be fine with a standard OEM drive. The only difference between retail and OEM hard drives is that the retail includes some useless CD and an extra IDE cable with a booklet. All you need is the hard drive and an IDE cable. Your motherboard should already have an IDE cable avaiable.
The hard drives you linked to are no good. They have long seek times and only include a 2MB buffer. Not only that, but they are only 40GB, which, as Crazy Eddie points out, is not good value.
I'd recommend getting something like this, which includes an 8MB buffer and 8.9ms seek time - not to mention that it's 80GB for only a few bucks more.
If you're willing to spend an extra $30 on top of that, you can always order a hard drive with twice that capacity (160GB) located here
Depending on your motherboard, you also have the option between SATA and IDE hard drives. The main difference here is the type of cable that connects the hard drive to the motherboard. There isn't a significant enough speed difference (yet) to really make a difference in buying either. To be on the safe side, stick with the IDE drives for the time being.
The hard drives you linked to are no good. They have long seek times and only include a 2MB buffer. Not only that, but they are only 40GB, which, as Crazy Eddie points out, is not good value.
I'd recommend getting something like this, which includes an 8MB buffer and 8.9ms seek time - not to mention that it's 80GB for only a few bucks more.
If you're willing to spend an extra $30 on top of that, you can always order a hard drive with twice that capacity (160GB) located here
Depending on your motherboard, you also have the option between SATA and IDE hard drives. The main difference here is the type of cable that connects the hard drive to the motherboard. There isn't a significant enough speed difference (yet) to really make a difference in buying either. To be on the safe side, stick with the IDE drives for the time being.
MarineCorps
Explosion!
So I don't need two. Intestingly good. As I saw one guy state he used one as a master HD and that got me all confused. 
Thanks
Hehe. Yeah. I wasn't paying attenion to anything other then space.
Thanks
Ah. Sounds good. I have an IDE cable already so thats good.Jeratain said:
Jeratain said:
Hehe. Yeah. I wasn't paying attenion to anything other then space.
Hmm, thats not actually not all that bad of an idea. Thanks.Jeratain said:
I have IDE so...Jeratain said:
Crazy Eddie
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MC, if you have this motherboard then you don't have any SATA connectors, just a pair of IDE/ata100.
Also bear in mind that if you slave your old HD or optical drive to the new one it'll slow it down. Try to keep it seperate if you can, it'll improve it's speed. (you may have to temporarily connect the two if you need to transfer data)
Also bear in mind that if you slave your old HD or optical drive to the new one it'll slow it down. Try to keep it seperate if you can, it'll improve it's speed. (you may have to temporarily connect the two if you need to transfer data)
Damnyankee
Honest Abe
if you replace a hd, do you have to reinstall everything? BIOS, graphics card, sound card, etc?
Crazy Eddie
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Well, the new one will be completely blank so it will need a full reinstall of any drivers when you install windows. There's no need to touch any of the hardware, and the BIOS should autodetect the new drive.
It's not too much trouble with a little preparation and you get a nice clean copy of windows again, which is always a good thing.
It's not too much trouble with a little preparation and you get a nice clean copy of windows again, which is always a good thing.
Damnyankee
Honest Abe
Crazy Eddie said:
by hardware you mean..... and what is BIOS, never got that(hey i'm a computer noob what do you expect)
BIOS = Basic Input Output SystemDamnyankee said:
When you boot your computer, it will usually say "Press Del key to enter BIOS." It's your essential setup for the computer, which usually you don't need to mess with - especially if you don't know what you are doing.
Back to your hard drive question: If you replace your old hard drive with a new one, it's like this: Let's say you have a 30 minute tape, which is filled to capacity with audio that you have recorded. You buy a new tape with a higher capacity (60 minutes) and put it in place of the old one. The music you have from the first tape isn't on the second tape.
So it's the the same thing (sortof) for hard drives. You will be putting a new hard drive in, meaning you will have to re-install all of your software, which will include your operating system, programs, games, etc.
You can, however, do something that will allow you to keep your old hard drive as it is and use the new one as an add-on. This is through a method of having a "master" and "slave" drive. I don't recommend doing this while having an older drive as the master and the newer one as the slave, because then you will see a bottleneck in performance because of the seek times and since it will be on the same IDE channel. Blah blah blah, for more info, search Google or howstuffworks.com.
Strontium_Dog
Chieftain
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You can avoid bottlenecking by re-arranging your IDE devices, when adding a second HDD. The existing HDD should (or the new one, if you want to boot from it) should be on the Primary channel, as master. Connect your cd-rom to the primary slave. Put the second HDD on the Secondary Master, and any DVD-rom as the secondary slave. Unfortunatly, the standard ribbon cables probably won't reach, to do this. I use these, rounded ones cables . I have the copper braided type, as I think it looks they look the part
MarineCorps
Explosion!
Crazy Eddie said:
I have every intention to sell the POS. $$$
Crazy Eddie
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Woah, not a good idea! Two drives on the same IDE channel need to use the same transfer mode, which means they'll both run at the speed of the slowest drive. If you slave an optical drive (ata/33) to a hard disk (typicaly ata/100-133) you can seriously reduce data transfer rates.Strontium_Dog said:
Crazy Eddie
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3 dollars is about what you'll be able to sell it for.MarineCorps said:I have every intention to sell the POS. $$$
It's better to keep it as a spare, just in case.
Jeratain said:
I have an 80 Gig SATA hard drive, and it doesn't seem to perform especially wonderful....
....However, I bought it for the double search speed it can experience when combined with another 80 gig SATA. As opposed to IDEs that bottleneck on the slowest drive, combining SATAs double their speed! I would have to format my first drive, but I thought SATA was too neat, and for future upgrade purposes, should serve quite nicely on my next machine.
Strontium_Dog
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Crazy Eddie said:
Makes sense. My current one is'nt set up this way anyway, I'm running my HDD's on RAID. My opticals on standard ide.
My first pc, from Time computers (yes, I know, I won't be buying a second) was set up this way though, and their tech's told me it was better.
But then their tech's also tried to tell me I needed to buy extra RAM from them, and let them fit it. Arse to them.
Mind you, I found an unforseen problem, with all these drives, and their associated cables. My case is a pig to get the side on, have to cram the cables in
