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Getting a new harddrive?
Digito
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Ok I'm preeeetty sure I asked this question once some number of months ago, back when I thought my harddrive was about to die a painful agonizing death, but... my HD managed to hang on and we never got around to actually getting ahold of a harddrive.
But now with the Christmas Season in full blast, it seems I'll be able to get myself a brand new harddrive for Christmas, the only catch being that it's probably going to have to be under a hundred dollars. Not that I really mind, I've spotted a handful of 320 gigabyte drives for that price.
However, I recall almost none of the advice I got last time I asked this question as I never got a chance to put any of it to use, so I guess I'm kinda stuck with two questions at once here. The first question...
Now I know there are different kinds of harddrives, (IDE, SATA, so on so forth) but I can't remember for the life of me what these mean, or which my computer is able to take. I also know nothing about installing a harddrive, so even if I popped it open right now, I'd have no idea what I'm looking for as far as if a harddrive will fit or not, or if my computer is capable of having two drives installed at the same time.
Second, I'm entirely open to reccomendations for a hundred dollar harddrive, or less than a hundred dollars. I'm pretty sure that this ISN'T alot of money to work with, but I'm not about to pass this chance up, especially as I'm pretty sure this time that my harddrive is definately on the way out. (and 120 gigs feels so small these days...)
Third, I just thought of this, but my computer came prebuilt with a copy of XP already installed, and as such I don't own a spare copy. Will the restore discs be able to put XP onto the new harddrive, or am I about to be forced onto Linux or something here?
(to clarify I'm talking about internal drives here, I highly doubt an external would be fast enough to serve as a main harddrive unless I missed something here.)
But now with the Christmas Season in full blast, it seems I'll be able to get myself a brand new harddrive for Christmas, the only catch being that it's probably going to have to be under a hundred dollars. Not that I really mind, I've spotted a handful of 320 gigabyte drives for that price.
However, I recall almost none of the advice I got last time I asked this question as I never got a chance to put any of it to use, so I guess I'm kinda stuck with two questions at once here. The first question...
Now I know there are different kinds of harddrives, (IDE, SATA, so on so forth) but I can't remember for the life of me what these mean, or which my computer is able to take. I also know nothing about installing a harddrive, so even if I popped it open right now, I'd have no idea what I'm looking for as far as if a harddrive will fit or not, or if my computer is capable of having two drives installed at the same time.
Second, I'm entirely open to reccomendations for a hundred dollar harddrive, or less than a hundred dollars. I'm pretty sure that this ISN'T alot of money to work with, but I'm not about to pass this chance up, especially as I'm pretty sure this time that my harddrive is definately on the way out. (and 120 gigs feels so small these days...)
Third, I just thought of this, but my computer came prebuilt with a copy of XP already installed, and as such I don't own a spare copy. Will the restore discs be able to put XP onto the new harddrive, or am I about to be forced onto Linux or something here?
(to clarify I'm talking about internal drives here, I highly doubt an external would be fast enough to serve as a main harddrive unless I missed something here.)
Digito on
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Anyway, get a drive with a 5 year warranty (all seagate drives and "RE" series WDs). AFAIK Hitachi drives aren't great, but all other major brands are OK (Maxtor drives might be a bit loud though).
I think Seagate (or maybe Maxtor?) has some free software on their site that lets you copy your system partition to the new hard drive. For some reason this works and you can then use the new drive for booting - your whole system should be intact (just swap the connections on them to boot from the new one, or change the boot order in the BIOS).
You wouldn't want an external hard drive as your system drive, but they aren't bad for storage. Their transfer rate is capped by the interface at ~33MB/s while I think the new drives can get up to ~70MB/s.
edit: You can buy just an external enclosure into which you can put whatever desktop hard drive you like (assuming the enclosure internal interface is the same) including your old drive.
At night, the ice weasels come."
SATA is a better interface, so use that if you can.
There are plenty of good drives for < $100. I just got a 250GB SATA drive at New Egg for $75, and it has a 16MB cache. Which brings me to the guidelines for what you're looking for. Obviously size is a major factor. The speed of the drive (5400 rpm, 7200 rpm, etc) is another, and so is the size of the cache. I personally wouldn't buy anything with less than an 8MB cache, and the one I just got has 16. In both cases, higher is better. Faster revolution speed gives you faster access times. More cache memory means the drive can use that more often instead of reading directly from the disk.
Brand is kind of subjective. I've been going with Western Digital recently, because I've had good experiences with them. I used to like Seagate, but haven't trusted them since they bought Maxtor, because I **HATE** Maxtor and have gotten nothing but crap drives from them.
http://www.thelostworlds.net/
$100 isn't a whole lot to work with, but for a hard drive, it's not bad. Just browsing newegg, I see a 320GB Seagate, 250GB Western Digital, etc. for under $100, so you should be fine. My basic advice would be this:
-Get SATA if your motherboard will take it. Let us know the mobo's model number, computer model, or something, and someone can tell you what it can take.
-Make sure you get a 3.5" (internal drive for desktops), not a 2.5" (which are for laptops, and generally more expensive.)
-7200RPM is pretty much the standard for speed. They make drives going up to 10,000RPM (and maybe faster), but those are going to be expensive, loud, and run really hot. 7200 is what you want.
Beyond that, there's not too much to know. People will suggest different companies that are awesome/suck, but I've found that all the major manufacturers (Western Digital and Seagate especially) are pretty good. Also, installation is really easy. I mean, really easy. You need a screw driver, and you have to plug in two cables; that's it.
I have no idea how transferring Windows to the new drive will work. Legally, I'm pretty sure you can do it, as you own that license, and you'd still be using it only on one machine. Technically, with the protection Microsoft uses, I don't know how the process will go. I haven't used Windows in quite some time, and I've never restored from those restore discs that manufacturers give you, so who knows.
On the subject of what kind of motherboard I have, how would I go about finding this out from the computer itself? I admit that's one part of my comp I have absolutely no knowledge about, as I've never had to mess around with it.
If it helps, I'd gauge the systems age at about half a decade or so... it's an older comp by now. <_<; Give or take a year or maybe two.
The motherboard pictures at newegg are labeled now, so you can check them out also
They aren't always orange.
At night, the ice weasels come."
Its name completely escapes me as I've never bought one.
A Drive enclosure.
Or you can just buy an external hard drive. Theres lots on the market.
Yeah, strangely enough there are decent looking ones that aren't more expensive then a internal drive + enclosure (example)
At night, the ice weasels come."
EDIT: That, and it'd be nice to know just what Motherboard I have in general
EDIT 2: And what are my odds of being able to hook up both HD's at once so I can just haul everything off of the first drive, and onto the new drive, and then from there actually sort out what I want to keep and get rid of? (I know, moving over a hundred gigabytes of stuff will probably take awhile, but... my stuff is a little unorganized, and it'll take longer to sort through it and figure out what I want to keep and what I want to get rid of than I have before I get the new harddrive.)
You shouldn't have any trouble using both drives at once.
At night, the ice weasels come."
Looks like I'll be doing this the old fashion way and cracking this case open to take a look, while I'm digging around in there, does anybody know how I can check to see if I can install two harddrives at once? (I don't know if that's standard or not...)
I've never seen a computer on which you can't install two at once (as long as there's a physical space inside the case to attach both.) Generally you can just use an IDE cable that has space for attaching two drives. The only thing is, with two drives on one cable, you have to play around with jumper settings (the little pins next to the power and IDE connections, that say things like master, slave, etc.) Those always confuse me, so someone else may have to give you some pointers, but there's no reason you shouldn't be able to do this.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822148139
I dunno... it's got 320 gigs of space, 7200 RPM, 16MB cache, and it's an IDE to boot. (Which is a good thing, because upon looking, my computer doesn't do SATA.)
And all for under a hundred dollars? It seems like the perfect drive, but is there anything here I should be wary of? Something that someone more knowledgable about harddrives could warn me of?
$100 or so is about the standard price for a 320GB hard drive nowadays.
If you're buying it from the Internet, that is. Best Buy and CompUSA will typically charge like twice as much.
Anyway. An IDE connection will support up to two devices per connection. Most motherboards have two connections (total of four devices), and the optical drives are usually kept on a separate line from the hard drives. Some of the newer motherboards only have one IDE port, as IDE is slowly being phased out. If your current hard drive is connected to your motherboard with a gigantic ribbon cable, it's IDE.
SATA is newer and faster, and it uses smaller cables that don't impede airflow nearly as much. If you have SATA ports on your motherboard, get a SATA drive. If not, settle for IDE, I guess.
If you want to transfer data from the old drive to the new one you'll first have to install the new one as a secondary. It would be easiest to set it up on a separate cable as master or cable select, or hook it up to the same cable the old one uses and set it as slave.
You might need to go into the BIOS (hit DEL at POST) and make the motherboard find the new drive - set Primary Master and Primary Slave to Auto which will make the system recognize both PATA devices on the Primary channel at every POST.
I think you'll have to format/partition the drive before you do anything with it. Under XP go to Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Computer Management -> Disk Managment. Initialize the drive - I think you do this my right-clicking the drive icon. Partition the drive - the option should be in the context menu of the drive icon or the "unpartitioned space" next to it. Format the drive and assign a drive letter.
Now you can use Seagate DiskWizard or Maxtor MaxBlast to copy the whole old drive to the new one. I think you'll be able to do it even if you aren't using drives from these companies, though I'm not sure.
Additionally, Seagate owns Maxtor now, so I would expect them both to work on Maxtor and Seagate drives even if they are limited.
After that's done just swap the jumpers on the drives if they use the same cable (ie. new drive - master, old drive - slave) or swap their physical connections if they use separate cables.
At night, the ice weasels come."