Dumb question, hard drives

NFSBLUECIVIC · Post by **NFSBLUECIVIC** » 19 Dec 2005, 06:50

so i have a 80 gig right, and i think im goin to buy like a 250-300 gig one, but my question is, can i buy one, and then use them both at the same time? so like they are both in my computer and i can save stuf to ether one? And can i use one or the other primarily so like my comp isnt slow from lots of stuff stored? i dont know if this makes sense to you but please reply.

arabnight · Post by **arabnight** » 19 Dec 2005, 06:52

depends which u got now and wut ur getting and usally u can...

Jmac- · Post by **Jmac-** » 19 Dec 2005, 07:00

Yes, you can use multiple hard drives at once and your primary drive will be whatever one the operating system is on ...

Make sure you get a good hard drive, though ... I'd go with Seagate, Samsung, or Hitachi ... I'd stay away from Maxtor ...

NFSBLUECIVIC · Post by **NFSBLUECIVIC** » 19 Dec 2005, 07:04

i was thinking of this one

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications ... No=1265028

eh?

Post by **SuperRacer** » 19 Dec 2005, 07:20

Just so you know, tigerdirect has a bad reputation with mail-in rebates.
Here's a nice deal if you have a CompUSA store near you: http://www.compusa.com/products/product ... pfp=BROWSE

arabnight · Post by **arabnight** » 19 Dec 2005, 07:26

right now im gona be using a 40g western ide and putting in a 250g sata seagate

NFSBLUECIVIC · Post by **NFSBLUECIVIC** » 19 Dec 2005, 08:08

o yea, one more question on ram, so when it says that its 512 mb, is that in one stick, or two, cause i have 1 512 stick in my comp, and i want another 512 stick, im a bit confudled.

prince1142003 · Post by **prince1142003** » 19 Dec 2005, 15:09

if you have one stick in, and your computer says it has 512 MB, then that one stick is 512 MB. RAM sticks come in differents size, 256 MB, 512 MB, and 1 GB. how your's is set up tells you what you have.

PSZeTa · Post by **PSZeTa** » 19 Dec 2005, 16:23

I'd suggest smaller drives since one boom and 250gb of data, gone.

boganbusman · Post by **boganbusman** » 20 Dec 2005, 01:29

Jmac- wrote: I'd stay away from Maxtor ...

I have 2 Maxtor HD's and they work fine

donaldgladden · Post by **donaldgladden** » 20 Dec 2005, 02:03

of course you can use mutiple drives silly lol.

you should see Katana's wild drive setup. i think 1.1 TBs aheh

Jmac- · Post by **Jmac-** » 20 Dec 2005, 02:34

boganbusman wrote:
Jmac- wrote: I'd stay away from Maxtor ...
I have 2 Maxtor HD's and they work fine

That proves ... ?

I've been building computers for several years and used to always use Maxtor drives ... In the last few years, about 1/5 of the computers I've built using Maxtor drives have had problems, which is way too high for me to use them anymore. The other ~80% are still fine as far as I know. Since switching over to Samsung/Seagate for the computers I build last year, I haven't heard of a single HDD-related problem, although the Samsungs are noticably slower (but quieter).

Felixkissa · Post by **Felixkissa** » 20 Dec 2005, 18:19

The first SATA drive that I bought was from Maxtor an it broke right away. Immediately BIOS had trouble finding it and soon it died completely. Well I got new one to replace it with and it's been working just fine.
I gotta say that I used to also think that Maxtor drives are gr8, but the next one I buy is propably not gonna be a Maxtor.

Post by **SuperRacer** » 20 Dec 2005, 23:15

I've been using Western Digital hard drives for the last 6-7 years. I've never had any problems with any of them.

NFSBLUECIVIC · Post by **NFSBLUECIVIC** » 31 Jan 2006, 06:14

ok, so what is main differences between ide, sata, and scsi, and how can i identify which one i have? and what is serial ata? Also what do you want with rpm's (im guessing higher) and buffers?

prince1142003 · Post by **prince1142003** » 31 Jan 2006, 06:26

Serial ATA = SATA (New ATA + faster)
IDE = Old ATA + slower
SCSI = a bus/port that hard drives use. SCSI/IDE Bus is the interface that your motherboard uses to communicate with your IDE/ATA drives

higher RPMs better, but only if you can adequetely cool it. higher RPM drives tend to get hotter quickly. higher RPM = faster write speed

Buffers = how much information the hard drive can store before having a need to write it. probably not the best definition, but maybe i can give you an example: you send 32 MB to a hard drive with a 8 MB buffer. the data will be sent 8 MB at a time, because the buffer basically tells how much the hard drive can handle at once. it's like a temporary storage on the hard drive before the drive writes the data. the time difference is so small that most of the time it isn't even noticable, but a bigger buffer is usually better, especially with higher capacity drives.

NFSBLUECIVIC · Post by **NFSBLUECIVIC** » 31 Jan 2006, 06:36

thank you very much prince, that will help. Can you tell me how to identify what type of hd i have? (I bought a cheap pc from D.I.)

prince1142003 · Post by **prince1142003** » 31 Jan 2006, 07:00

if you're comfortable with opening up your computer, open it up and look at the hard drive cable. if it's a wide, gray cable, it's a IDE drive. it's a thin red/black cable it's a SATA.

there is a way to do it through windows, but i can't seem to remember it....

NFSBLUECIVIC · Post by **NFSBLUECIVIC** » 31 Jan 2006, 07:39

thanx prince, and yes im comfortable opening it up, i have ide on this one, 2 whole gigs of it! Hey so what do the new serial ata ones look like where they plug into mobo? is it near where the ide's are? so i bought this comp from the D.I and it was 3$, thats right 300 pennies, it has 95 on it and it actually runs pretty dang darn good!

Koffy · Post by **Koffy** » 31 Jan 2006, 16:30

If you get a drive just like the one you have now, you can array them in RAID 0 or 1. It is supposed to have a serious performance increase.

prince1142003 · Post by **prince1142003** » 01 Feb 2006, 00:43

SATA connectors on the motherboard

SATA connectors on the drives

SATA cables