Buying an int. SATA TB HDD - Where? And Can I?

Djiem

Hi peeps. I got this tower that's three years old but still works perfectly fine and plays all the games I want. I don't plan to change it anytime soon since all the games I want in the future are on consoles, but I'm running low on storage. In this tower is a 250GB HDD on which is Windows XP Home Edition. It's SATA.

I wanted to add a second HDD of 1TB or more for storage purposes, be it music, being able to install all my games at once, or using it as a ISO database (of all my DVDs I *legally* own before anyone questions my intents) to connect to my HDTV.

I wonder, what's the best place to buy one, online or retail, and get the best prices? Also, I haven't followed the news on HDDs in a while, are there faster or better quality ones? Lastly, can I have this second HDD next to my other one, or is there some sort of limitation with WinXP Home or SATA drives that keep me from doing this?

Thanks in advance.

imbalanced

As always, I recommend Newegg for everything. You can find around 15 different 1TB SATA HDD's there, ranging from $120 to $220. Personally, I would stick with the user ratings and pick the Western Digital one, but all of those are decent name brands.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010150014%201035915133%20103530090&name=800GB%20and%20higher

As far as I know (although I reserve the right to be wrong), there are no size restrictions on XP as long as you have SP2 or SP3 installed. Before those service packs, apparently XP was locked at 127GB, although it doesn't really matter if you're using a RAID controller anyway -- even if you're using the controller just to mount a basic or dynamic drive instead of a RAID setup.

mrbernz

I would second newegg might also look at buy.com as they sometimes have sales on HD.

Djiem

Thanks, I'll check those out.

Beazle

Stick the drive into an open bay and go. I currently have 1TB, 750GB, 500GB, and a 200GB in my media pc. It runs fine. I have the WD 1GB green drive.

reconflux

Go with Seagate since they have a 5 year warranty for all their hard drives. NOT OEM, retail only. Do not buy WD or Maxtor.

stigweard

Seagate have 5 year warranty for oem drives as well, but not for the end user. I'd stay away from New Egg Canada, their prices are bordering on outrageous for some items ($250 for a 1tb oem drive when they can be had for 100$ less anywhere else).

Azio

With the exchange rate your best bet is NCIX, where the Seagate is currently on sale for CAD $120.

Serious_Scrub

Maxtor is now owned by Seagate, so I'm pretty sure all of the drives now are rebranded Seagates, but with a 3-year warranty instead of a 5-year one

Daedalus

There's a 1.5TB Seagate drive on Newegg, too. I'm thinking of picking it up myself.

Djiem

There, bought the NCIX one, it did result in the best price. Thanks for the help, all.

reconflux

stigweard wrote: »

Seagate have 5 year warranty for oem drives as well, but not for the end user. I'd stay away from New Egg Canada, their prices are bordering on outrageous for some items ($250 for a 1tb oem drive when they can be had for 100$ less anywhere else).

yeah you're right.. I was thinking of Intel CPUs from Newegg.. retail vs. oem.