hard drive capacity

[dotto]

Hi all
i want to replace my HD (80gb) with a bigger capacity one (IDE 250 gb). As i have an old pc, about 10 yrs old, would i have to make sure that it is compatible with my mobo ( i mean in terms of capacity) or can i just connect up any capacity hard drive?.....................i know that with memory sticks you must first make sure that your mobo supports a certain density, that is the reason for my question. Thank you for your time.

 

[Richard C]

I think your going to have a problem with a 10 year old MOBO which will be EIDE interface (the cable); as far as I know all HDD’s available now are at least SATA 2 & now SATA 3 is available. My nearly 4 year old MOBO has an early SATA 1 interface & no matter what I tried, it would not recognise the SATA 2 drive & in the end I had to send it back in exchange it for an external USB HDD. Unless you can get hold of a compatible second hand EIDE HDD, I think a USB (assuming you have it) HDD will be your best, keeping your O/S on the existing drive & using the external drive for additional storage; but they are slow by comparison.

Even if you can get an EIDE drive, you may still have problems with your O/S seeing the full capacity of the drive without a lot of frigging around but it depends which O/S you have.

Time to upgrade the PC me thinks, I’m going to have to very shortly.

 

[Richard C]

Just had a quick look at my supplier & it seems you can still get some EIDE HDD's so it's probably going to be down to the particular O/S your running as to how easy it will be. Sorry should have checked first; I'll go back tto the plastering/tiling forums

Still might be best to upgrade though; a 10 year old PC is going to be mind numbingly slow by comparison to what you can get today for just a couple of hundred quid.

 

[Monkeh]

PATA drives are silly easily available, if somewhat expensive. This is as good as any other: http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/250G...00AVJB-AV-IDE-(PATA)-7200-rpm-8MB-Cache-89-ms

Your PC shouldn't have any real issues with it. It may or may not boot off it, but as long as you use the existing drive as the OS drive all will be fine. There should be plenty of space in the case for two.

As for your SATA issues, Richard, you have a stupid, broken, horrible, probably VIA controller. I'll agree with the upgrade sentiment though. Unless you buy a very high end PC, you'll be lucky to get more than five years of reasonable service out of one. *glares at the parental laptop*

 

[Richard C]

As for your SATA issues, Richard, you have a stupid, broken, horrible, probably VIA controller.

Spot on, early VIA Apparently a known problem (but I didn’t know then) & after a lot of digging & frigging around with drivers & BIOS updates etc, the general consensus was that it was just not compatible so I gave up in the end & bought 2 x USB drives; painfully slow though.

 

[Monkeh]

I would've just bought a PCI controller.

Actually, no, I would've just replaced the entire VIA-ridden board.

 

[Richard C]

Actually, no, I would've just replaced the entire VIA-ridden board.

Well that was what I intended doing but once I started to look at what was available, things just went from bad to worse. In the end I would have had to skip my current processor, memory & most of my other components as they were not compatible with current MOBO interfaces. In the end I decided to soldier on with my current box for a while longer as the dual core Athlon processor I have is still quiet fast by comparison. Fairly soon I’m going to build or buy (doesn’t seem to any more expensive these days) a complete new system & keep this one as standby rather than shove the components up in the loft with all the other legacy stuff I have up there.

 

[Monkeh]

PCs are as expensive as you make them. You could probably build yourself a perfectly fine system for £500 or so (you can go cheaper but it's worth spending the extra if you want it to last). Me.. my next box will probably be £1200-1500.

As for buying, I'd recommend building rather than buying. You'll get better warranties (from three years to lifetime for most parts, only a few are one year, vs the bog standard one year you get with say, Dell), better quality parts, and the satisfaction of doing it yourself.

 

[ajrobb]

Rather than upgrading the hard drive, you might want to consider a laptop as a replacement for your old desktop.

Even low-end desktop PCs use about twice as much electricity (40W-80W) as a low-end laptop (20W-40W). When turned 'off', a desktop will still use about 4W while a laptop only uses 1W-2W. The 3½" desktop hard disc drives are much noisier than laptop 2½" drives. The desktop cooling fans are also very noisy.

I run a laptop as my main PC but I have several desktops that are largely unused (from my days in IT). When I'm using it, it is whisper quiet and uses just 19W (unless I'm on an animated web page). I keep the battery out of the laptop, because keeping them fully charged shortens their life. Most of the time, the laptop is on standby with the lid shut and it comes off standby when I open the lid. This is MUCH faster than turning it on. It is weird, but on standby it uses 1W but when off it uses 2W.

 

[Monkeh]

And on the other end of the spectrum: Laptops are harder to type on, have smaller screens, lower performance, higher prices, lower reliability, and are more expensive to repair.

And please, don't go around branding every desktop as noisy. I've built some very, very noisy ones, and I've built ones you can't hear at full load unless you put your ear on the case.

 

[ajrobb]

And on the other end of the spectrum: Laptops are harder to type on, have smaller screens, lower performance, higher prices, lower reliability, and are more expensive to repair.

And please, don't go around branding every desktop as noisy. I've built some very, very noisy ones, and I've built ones you can't hear at full load unless you put your ear on the case.

Laptops are only slightly harder to type on and you can use an external keyboard for serious typing.

Although laptop screens are smaller, they often support dual screens. So you can keep you large monitor and use the laptop screen for monitoring e-mails etc.

A modern laptop has much better performance than a 10 year old desktop and is generally plenty good enough. If you want to stay on the bleading edge, then a desktop gaming PC with multiple GPUs, many gigabytes of memory, RAID, blah blah... burning hundred of watts with fans screaming.

You claim lower reliability for laptops. Is that because their components have a shorter MTBF or because they get knocked? I use my laptop on a place mat, so I don't get lint in the fan.

Just a single 3½" HDD component is much noisier than a whole laptop, and is easily audible across the room. Standard desktop systems are just too noisy for my living room. I've built quieter PCs (Zalman fan, quiet PSU, no GPU fan and rubber HDD mounts) but the 3½" HDD lets them down. On my old office desktop, I tried half a dozen different 3½" HDDs but resorted to a 2½" laptop HDD. Adding quiet components removes the cost advantage of a desktop and might invalidate any guarantee. It is not for the casual user.

I repair my own laptops (usually after they have been dropped by someone else), so I don't know about cost.

 

[dotto]

Thanks for your inputs guys.
I am getting one from ebay.........second hand IDE connection. I want to put my Windows XP on it. Do you think i'll be fine with it then? Thanx again

 

[Richard C]

Thanks for your inputs guys.
I am getting one from ebay.........second hand IDE connection. I want to put my Windows XP on it. Do you think i'll be fine with it then? Thanx again

You will need a minimum XP SP2 slipstream disk to see the full drive capacity >127GB from initial format/install. The other way of doing it is to create the max size partition XP will let you (127GB), install the O/S & then use something like Easeus Partition Master (free & used to be Partition Magic I think) to partition the rest of the drive which will show up as unformatted space once the O/S is booted. It’s straight forward enough but can be confusing if you’ve never come across it before.

 

[Monkeh]

You claim lower reliability for laptops. Is that because their components have a shorter MTBF or because they get knocked? I use my laptop on a place mat, so I don't get lint in the fan.

Primarily due to heat, dust, and vibration. Damage due to dropping and other accidents is also much more likely than with a desktop.

Just a single 3½" HDD component is much noisier than a whole laptop, and is easily audible across the room.

Stop using 15k SCSI drives from the late 90s. Modern HDDs are not that noisy, and it's easy to deaden what little sound a modern 5400RPM drive (which is still faster than most 7200RPM 2.5" drives) makes. Performance and silence, however, very rarely go hand in hand.

I repair my own laptops (usually after they have been dropped by someone else), so I don't know about cost.

Certain parts cost a noticable amount. I've spent £70 repairing failed and damaged parts on my Thinkpad, and precisely £0 replacing non-HDD components on my desktops (I have had numerous failed Seagate Barracuda 7200.11s. I no longer purchase their products), although a mass replacement of high performance 120mm fans is imminent.

I'll note that I use laptops daily, and do not find a sufficiently good one to be difficult to use, however, I do not buy £400 consumer laptops. I have no problem with laptops, but I do not feel they're a suitable replacement for a decent quality desktop for day to day usage in the home.

I am getting one from ebay.........second hand IDE connection. I want to put my Windows XP on it. Do you think i'll be fine with it then? Thanx again

If I were you I would not take a gamble on a second hand drive.

 

[ajrobb]

You will need a minimum XP SP2 slipstream disk to see the full drive capacity >127GB from initial format/install.

Alternatively, create a driver floppy disc and install direct from CD.

However, I prefer nLite to install XP SP3 and drivers directly (built from XP + SP3 + drivers).