Yet another harddrive question.

[Moonspell2003]

Im just curious and I know this may be a noobie question but how do you tell what kind of hardrives your mobo supports? I need to find out what my computer can use it has a MAXTOR 6L040J2, 40 gig right now and I need to get a 80 or 120 gig HD

Thanks

 

[Petros]

It is actually up to the type of partition your operating system uses. Windows XP/2000 uses NTFS, which will accept any of those sizes.

So you're good 🙂

 

[Moonspell2003]

ok well i have xp, so thats good but what about the whole ata 133 and sata hd's if i got that right, i know ones better then the other but i dont know if my mobo supports sata I have an *old now* asus a7a

And what about external hd,s what do you guys and gals think about them are they just as good or would an internal be better?

I had been looking at a Maxtor Ultra 120GB Int. Hard Drive 7200 RPM U133 8MB but there are sooo many hardrives and I need a real good one for gaming, photo editing and all that good stuff do you guys have any recomandations?

 

[canadian_divx]

SATA is a compleatly different plug all togther, is your mobo an amd or intel?

 

[canadian_divx]

NO your motherboard does not take sata, and your board will take upto a 120GB hdd i think if not there are tools from maxtor or Western digital for the windows users out there. if linux, dont worry.

 

[Moonspell2003]

its an amd mobo it runs an athlon 1.33

 

[canadian_divx]

personaly i think internal is better and a Maxtor HDD 120 8mb 133 is better, but it gets hot so if you are worried about heat go to WD 8mb drives

 

[canadian_divx]

mostaly it is only new boards have SATA

 

[canadian_divx]

http://www.3dnews.ru/documents/5129/firewire_sata.jpg


that is a SATA connection for a 150mb/s transfer

 

[Moonspell2003]

so a WD would be better for me I guess, I dont know if i should keep my old hd in or pull it out all together, due to heat issues.

 

[canadian_divx]

well i would keep the old drive but only for storage purposes, nut if you keep it make sure it is not on the same IDE camble as the new one. because it will slow donw the new one. put it with the ROM drive or something

 

[Moonspell2003]

what drive would you suggest i get for speed, reliability and perfomance? in the 80 to 120 gig range id like a 120 but ill settle for less if its better

and should i put the os on the new one or leave it on the old one so if it crashes i dont lose all my data and i can just format and reinstall?

 

[canadian_divx]

i would put the OS on the new one because of the speed. other than that i would get a WD 120 8mb, i use only WD in my server because they last a long time so i would say go with a WD 8MB 120

 

[Moonspell2003]

will it conflict with my maxtor 40? I know im mental half my problem is im pretty pissed right now so im sorry. And thanks for your help my fellow Canadian. Im in alberta myself, and whats the differance between the special editon wd harddrives and the other ones?

Drinking to many Canadians and jack and cokes

 

[canadian_divx]

teh SE is a bit faster nad has a longer warrenty. and i think it is only the SE with the 8mb cash

 

[Moonspell2003]

Great, thanks divx im gonna go with the WD se 120 when i get paid thanks for all your help. Your rep meter just went up

 

[canadian_divx]

my what?

 

[LeeJend]

The WD 120 Special edition is a good drive w/3 year warantee adn 8MB cache. I'm running 2 now. They are dirt cheap in the USA after rebates. I got one for 60 and one for 70 USD.

I recommend you image the old 40 gig to the new 120 gig and then pull the old 40 gig out as a backup for a couple months. If you need the extra space you can reinstall later. Use the WD floppy to transfer the disk image from the old to the new. Do not reboot from HD with both drives in after you have made the transfer. Windos does not like 2 primary boot disks in at once.

Then make 2 more ~40 gig data partitions on the 120 gig drive.

PS I've been running nothing but WD for 14 years and never had a HD failure.

 

[Moonspell2003]

the reputation meter in on the left hand side

 

[Moonspell2003]

does the wd disk come with it to image the hd? ive never done that, so i just partition it off into basicly 3 40 gig drives? does that mean id just install the os on one partition and use the other 2 for saveing files, installing programs and such then if i crash all i have to do is format the one partiton, and can i use the wd se 120 with my computer? will there be any problems