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Upgrading my computer's Hard Drive

G

Ghostface Killah

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 25, 2005
Messages
139
I am going to get a new hard drive.

Just one hard drive
120 gb or 160gb
Serial ATA
$80~$120

I was looking through Newegg and found two different types of Serial ATA.
Serial ATA II, and Serial ATA 150. Which is better? I am getting a new mother board as well, the MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum SLI

Which company makes the best, and reliable hard drives? (Note: I am not going to get Maxtor, nor the other ones.) I brought it down to these two.

Western Digital
Seagate

Once I know which one is better, I will pick out several hard drives from Newegg. So what do you guys recommend?
 
Seagate Barracuda 7200.7/7200.8. Samsung makes good and quiet HDD's too.
 
Ghostface Killah said:
What are the noticible differences between Western Digital and Seagate besides warranty?
Click to expand...

StorageReview.com is a good place for HDD reviews/comparisons. Also, +1 on the Samsung drives...very quiet (idle noise is low, and nonexistant when suspended on a home-brew rubber setup) and *subjectively* feels much more responsive than my old 7200.7 (both PATA).
 
I am upgrading my computer with brand new parts.
New mobo, CPU, Hard drive, Video Card etc.
When I first turn on the computer after installing everything what do I need to do?
What I have so far is

1) Go to bios and change the boot order to CD Drive so the windows xp disc runs
2) Let windows install

But when it installs am I supposed to install the SATA Drivers or what? I am only installing one hard drive so I will not be doing raid. But someone told me I need to install the SATA drivers?
 
You will need the SATA drivers on a floopy disk. Hit F6 when the windows installer asks for any third party driver. Then you will be ready to finish the install.
 
Ghostface Killah said:
Serial ATA II, and Serial ATA 150. Which is better?
Click to expand...

There's no such thing as SATA II. I'd recommend getting the Seagate drive over the Western Digital, as WD uses old technology in their drives (Their SATA drive is actually a PATA drive with a converter chip.). Seagate also normally has a better warrenty, and is well known for their reliability. So in summary,

Seagate:
+Newer Technology
+Better Warrenty
+Better Reliability
-More Expensive

Western Digital:
+Cheaper
-Older
+Not bad reliability (Never had one fail on me)
+Not bad warrenty (3 years, normally)
 
TeeJayHoward said:
There's no such thing as SATA II. I'd recommend getting the Seagate drive over the Western Digital, as WD uses old technology in their drives (Their SATA drive is actually a PATA drive with a converter chip.). Seagate also normally has a better warrenty, and is well known for their reliability. So in summary,
Click to expand...
Which one should I get?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16822148034
Serial ATA II http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16822144415
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16822144178
 
Ghostface Killah said:
Which one should I get?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16822148034
Serial ATA II http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16822144415
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16822144178
Click to expand...


The seagate has a 5 year warranty and NCQ. It's really no competition. Get the Seagate. It's cheaper, faster, and longer lasting.

Edit: A note - Newegg is not a bad place to buy stuff. Heck, it's a very good place to buy stuff. But from what I understand, ZipZoomFly is cheaper, and packs their hard drives better. You might want to consider looking there.
 
TeeJayHoward said:
Edit: A note - Newegg is not a bad place to buy stuff. Heck, it's a very good place to buy stuff. But from what I understand, ZipZoomFly is cheaper, and packs their hard drives better. You might want to consider looking there.
Click to expand...
Correct, my only beef with Newegg is the way they pack the drives. Their service is still great on everything else, they just don't quite get that packing a precision mechanical device requires a little extra effort.
 
TeeJayHoward said:
The seagate has a 5 year warranty and NCQ. It's really no competition. Get the Seagate. It's cheaper, faster, and longer lasting.

Edit: A note - Newegg is not a bad place to buy stuff. Heck, it's a very good place to buy stuff. But from what I understand, ZipZoomFly is cheaper, and packs their hard drives better. You might want to consider looking there.
Click to expand...
Thanks, I will look into Zipzoomfly

What's NCQ?
 
Native Command Queing. Should speed up seek time on random reads / writes. It's really intended more for nearline storage SATA raid, than in desktop use though. And your board needs to support it.
 
Well I have read that SATA II is a meaningless term for the most part...

Apparantly though the motherboard I'm getting has a "SATA II" controller. The term can't be totally meaningless, so what does that mean? Also, what differentiates a WD "SATA II" drive from a plain SATA drive that would make them put "SATA II" on it?
 
Ghostface Killah said:
1) Go to bios and change the boot order to CD Drive so the windows xp disc runs
2) Let windows install

But when it installs am I supposed to install the SATA Drivers or what? I am only installing one hard drive so I will not be doing raid. But someone told me I need to install the SATA drivers?
Click to expand...
Actually no, at least assuming the NF4 SATA ports work like the NF3 ones. On my NF3 board the regular windows drivers work just fine- the SATA ports are driver compatible with ATA.
You need the NForce drivers for RAID, but unless they've actually managed to fix them in the last couple of months if you install them there's a good chance you'll have all kinds of problems with burning DVDs and CDs. I tried them, but had to roll them back after noticing burn proof kept coming on on CD burns and I was coastering DVDs.
Unfortunately the NV drivers can't seem to separate the SATA from the PATA ports. If you install the drivers they end up running both, thereby hosing your opticals. A lot of people get a BSOD when trying to roll them back as well, so it's probably best to just not mess with them unless you're planning a RAID. I didn't, but that may have something to do with all my HDs being SCSI in that system.
As for what drive to get, I prefer Seagate. What you should really do though is go to www.storagereview.com and check the reliability surveys.
 
zandor said:
Actually no, at least assuming the NF4 SATA ports work like the NF3 ones. On my NF3 board the regular windows drivers work just fine- the SATA ports are driver compatible with ATA.
You need the NForce drivers for RAID, but unless they've actually managed to fix them in the last couple of months if you install them there's a good chance you'll have all kinds of problems with burning DVDs and CDs. I tried them, but had to roll them back after noticing burn proof kept coming on on CD burns and I was coastering DVDs.
Unfortunately the NV drivers can't seem to separate the SATA from the PATA ports. If you install the drivers they end up running both, thereby hosing your opticals. A lot of people get a BSOD when trying to roll them back as well, so it's probably best to just not mess with them unless you're planning a RAID. I didn't, but that may have something to do with all my HDs being SCSI in that system.
As for what drive to get, I prefer Seagate. What you should really do though is go to www.storagereview.com and check the reliability surveys.
Click to expand...

Thanks, can anyone else confirm?
 
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