Getting new harddrive, questions!

[Varg|Hund]

Hey!

right, so I've decided to finally get another harddrive for my computer, seeing as my old 40 gb one is just way to small. but as some of you surely know, I'm not that savvy when it comes to computer hardware, so I've got some questions..

firstly, can I keep my old harddrive, and still install a new one? And in that case, will I have to format my old harddrive or anything like that? Or is it just a matter of plugging in the new harddrive and pressing the 'on' button?

secondly, I've got four connect-thingies on my IDE-cable (at least I think it's called IDE.. you know, that large cable inside the computer that connects to the harddrive and cd-players and stuff), does it matter which one of these I use for the new harddrive? Or can I just select one at random and plug it in?

thirdly (? ), does my motherboard etc matter when getting a new harddrive? In the shop I was in there were countless different kinds of harddrives, does it matter at all what type I buy? Or can I just take the one with the most gb's for the least £'s and head for the exit? Is there any chance that a specific haddrive won't work on my computer?

oh, and if I've forgot to ask something important, please tell me.
just assume that I don't know anything, and take me through all the important steps of buying/installing a new harddrive

thank you,
Varg

 

[Asus]

Any ATA100 or ATA133 harddrive will use the IDE cable you have. SATA drives do not use the IDE cable. Do you have a SATA port on your PC? Check your manual. You could use one of those if you had support for it.

Western Digital and Seagate are probably the more reliable brands. Maxtor is a little cheaper but isn't that great IMO (my brother just lost his stuff again on a refurb, same thing happend to the last one which was under warranty 1 year later).

But anyway, the only thing you will need to know for hardware setup is Master or Slave. See, for 2 drives to share the same cable one drive has to be set to Master and the other drive needs to be set to Slave. You already have 1 hard drive which is probably set to master. There is a sticker on the top of the drive or a marking on the bottom to tell you where to place the jumper for master and slave settings. This picture shows a jumper (white) on one pair of pins. 1 pair will set it to master and putting the jumper over a different pair would set it to slave.

So you just check the back of you current drive and set the jumper on the new drive accordingly. Then you need to Partition first and then Format the drive in NTFS (not FAT32).

If you are just adding a second harddrive to the machine then and have Windows XP then when in Windows go to Administrative Tools under the control panel. Then Computer Management and Disk Management. Should be able to partition and format from there. Just don't format your old harddrive. :O

If you want to make this drive the one with Windows on it then you will have to get out your Windows XP install and boot to the CD drive. It will walk you through. Within the install it will have you partition and format the drive.

 

[Varg|Hund]

Is SATA the same as Serial ATA IDE Connector? Because I've got one of those one my motherboard.. (the connection for it is incredibly small, compared to that of the IDE's)

oh, and my manual says that "the Serial ATA and RAID functions cannot be used at the same time"
What's RAID, and am I using it right now?

(btw, does SATA have any benefits compared to 'normal' IDE?)

 

[DrDevin]

SATA uses a smaller connector for better airflow and it is easier to "hide" in the case. However there are no real performance benefits.

Look for a hard drive that spins at 7200RPM with at least 8MB cache if not 16MB.

Like ASUS said, I would stay away from maxtor. Western Digital and Segate are good names to buy from (they seem to be reliable).

 

[Varg|Hund]

What difference does the cache do?

 

[Asus]

Is SATA the same as Serial ATA IDE Connector? Because I've got one of those one my motherboard.. (the connection for it is incredibly small, compared to that of the IDE's)

oh, and my manual says that "the Serial ATA and RAID functions cannot be used at the same time"
What's RAID, and am I using it right now?

(btw, does SATA have any benefits compared to 'normal' IDE?)

More cache will help speed up loading data from the harddrive.
If you have SATA ports, then go for a SATA drive. They are about the same price as regular ATA drives and are a little simpler to install.

Just to let you know IDE is the wide ribbon cable used with 100/133 ATA drives (Parallel ATA). Don't confuse it with Serial ATA. If you have the SATA plugs then you can buy a SATA harddrive. This is what the cable looks like.

SATA Pro's
It supports 150MB/s or 300MB/s.
Cables are thinner and they can be longer than IDE cables.
No Master/Slave jumper to mess with. 1 drive per port

Although most harddrives don't transfer more than 70MB/s average, they can burst beyond 133MB/s. RAID-0 also can go faster than 133MB/s.

Raid is a way of telling the computer to use multiple drives together. Either to make them mirror each other (RAID-1) or combine them for extra speed (RAID-0). I doubt you are using Raid right now. I wouldn't recommended RAID for you.

 

[CptStern]

seagate bought maxtor ...have they started manufacturing drives under the maxtor name?

 

[Varg|Hund]

so,
can I use SATA for the new drive, and still keep my old one plugged in to the 100/133 ATA? Or do both have to use the same system?

 

[Stigmata]

so,
can I use SATA for the new drive, and still keep my old one plugged in to the 100/133 ATA? Or do both have to use the same system?

I'd assume so. But there's really only one way to find out!

*waits patiently for Asus' response*