Purchasing a Hard Disk

[neverlate2day]

First things first, unless you have an old AGP motherboard don’t even bother with PATA hard drives, only look for those with SATA or SATA II interface.
Capacity:
It is an important factor to look for and is completely determined by your need and budget. Nowadays 160 GB is bare minimum and recommended is 250 GB, but if you’re willing to splurge then you can go up to 1 TB.
Buffer:
An 8 MB buffer is just par, I recommend the to-be norm 16 MB. Again if your willing to splurge you get drives with 32 MB buffer also.
RPM:
[FONT=&quot]5400 rpm is what you usually expect to find in laptops, for a desktop 7200 rpm is the norm. For higher performance and lower seek times you can purchase 10000 rpm hard drives too but they come with a premium.[/FONT]

Please feel free to add or point out anything i missed in my tutorial

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[DragonMaster]

Another tip, to save money, check the price per gigabyte when buying an hard drive.

For example, 80GB drives often cost only <$10 less than 160GB drive, and a single 1TB drive costs more than two 500GB drives.

Right now, the sweet spot is 500GB (costs around $80).

Another thing to note is that the latest generation hard drives are often only available in 500GB, 750GB and 1TB models and there's a good difference in performance between HDD generations. Another point in favor towards 500GB (which cost $10 more than last-generation 320GB drives).

5400 vs. 7200 RPM now mostly applies to laptop only. I can't even find 5400RPM desktop drives anymore. In the case of laptops, 7200RPMs cost more and consume more power, but give better performance. Something to note is that HDD manufacturers often come off with cheaper 5400RPMs that have an almost-as-good performance as previous generation 7200RPM drives after a few months.

If you're buying an hard drive as a replacement for an existing IDE / PATA drive, there are multiple options.

1. Buying a new IDE drive : You can replace your old hard drive with a new one, but there are a few things to watch. Some IDE controllers have a maximum HDD size limit, which is 32GB on quite old ones, and 127GB on some more recent models. Computers built around 2002 and up shouldn't have the problem, but they're most likely equipped with SATA connectors as well.

If your controller is limiting the size, you can buy a smaller hard drive than the maximum capacity it can handle and instantly solve any trouble, or there are some hard drives that have a little jumper on them to emulate a 32GB drive. You will then need to format a partition with the drive manufacturer's utility to be able to use the whole drive's space in your OS.

2. You can buy a SATA controller. SATA drives are cheaper than their IDE equivalents, and are often newer and faster. There are cheap PCI add-on cards that will add SATA ports to your computer. Be warned though, as some BIOSes might not be able to boot to a 3rd party controller like these. This is true especially if you have a pre-manufactured computer.

I hope this long post adds to neverlate2day's guide ;-)

 

[componentwarehouse]

I would add to that, if you have the money, get a WD Raptor, as theyre the fastest SATA drive around, and Ive been very pleased with mine. You could use that for the OS and any programs and then have a larger, slower HDD for storage and files, say a 500GB to 1TB one. That is the ideal setup for speed and storage space.

Alex

 

[DragonMaster]

Or, if you have more money, get the new 300GB VelociRaptor.

 

[woocorp]

guys, guys What happened to the old 1GB IDE HDD's they are so cool!

 

[hamsn]

hey does anyone know about western digital 699.6 mb HDD (PATA)


i actually used 10yrs back when the hdds where of 1gb-2gb range probably
Edit:
now i have a seagate sata 8200.1 rpm

320 gb capacity
w/ 5yrs onsite warranty!!!!
Edit:
please also post about external hdds

i need to know about firewires
then the combo hdd with both usb and firewire port
which are the companies offering this?

 

[Spartan Erik]

I haven't seen a firewire port on externals in ages (but maybe that's just a Seagate thing, as I have two externals that are USB only)

 

[Smith6612]

guys, guys What happened to the old 1GB IDE HDD's they are so cool!

A family relative of mine still has one of those computers with a 486 processor! That thing hasn't been used in over 10 years though lol. We have larger drives now though. My gaming computer has 3 1TB drives on it, now that is cool especially with the lights on it

 

[neverlate2day]

FireWire ports are found in many external hdd,
but it would be wiser to look for e-sata

 

[DragonMaster]

Hi,

Firewire works better than USB 2.0, as it doesn't make use of your CPU to transfer data. The only problem is that older computers rarely have the interface. On every new computers I've seen, with a few exceptions (ie. very low-end models) have at least one Firewire port.

eSATA is starting to take on, and you start to find it on cases front panels and laptops. It's harder to find than Firewire, but it's faster.

Speed : eSATA > Firewire > USB 2.0
Why? Intel designed USB and sells CPUs. They had to find a reason to make people upgrade their CPUs, hence why USB wastes CPU cycles. If you CPU is faster, less lag and faster transfer speeds. This isn't a problem with Firewire/1394 as Intel didn't invent it. (e)SATA doesn't have any problems either, even though Intel made it. It would just have been stupid to make your main HDD slow down your system.

Compatibility : USB 2.0 > Firewire > eSATA
Intel again -> it's the most popular motherboard chipset maker. They have the monopoly on what standards are found in most computers.

A combo unit is something that might be worth considering. A lot of manufacturers have at least an eSATA+USB or Firewire+USB unit.