Harddrives (Again)

Been a few threads on this sorry....

System's a packard Bell PC world effort. Think it must be about '97 or so.
Pentium 3 450MHz. 192MB RAM (128+64).....

....and a dying 6GB Harddrive!

Seem to be able to get about 160Gig for about £60, which seems good?

But I'm not really sure what I'm after

I've asked about IDE and SATA before. My current MOther board will obviously only take IDE. But I'll be looking to upgrade the whole shabang bit by bit. I'm sure I've heard that it's worth gettin a SATA drive and using a convertor to use it on my IDE only MObo? Therefore being able to use the advantages of SATA when I get a new board?

I may be talking pants, and admit I know little about this

So, anyone got any suggestions of good deals?

Cheers muchio

MO

 

i use a machine very close in spec to yours as my music server. i got a 160gb drive and a sata controller card from dabs - the sata card was about 20 quid. it can deal with 2 drives so you can expand it. the main reason to upgrade for me was that older ide controlers cant deal with large hard drives. piece of piss to install (bios and xp recognised it immediately) and once i'd worked out that you had to right click my computer, select manage and set up the new drive in there it was plain sailing.
i'd go for a 250 gb drive - dabs has them for just over 100 quid so 120 quid for the lot and you're laughing.
cheers


julian

 

Julian,

To clarify then, if I wanted to get a 250GB hard drive as a music storage drive and as I am using Win98SE with am IDE drive, I would need a SATA controller?

 

Robbo, not unless you went for a SATA hard drive. You can still get 250Gb EIDE drives, i.e Hitachi Deskstar drives which come in both SATA and IDE flavours.

 

On the help section on Dabs.com, it says:

* Computer is less than 12months old: All current IDE sizes should be recognised.
* Computer is between 12 & 24months old: 32Gb may be the maximum recognised.
* Computer is older than 24months: Only 16Gb or less may be recognised.

Well this is well over 24MOnths!

I've really not got much idea what I'm doing here.

I know what BIOS stands for, but that's about it.

Also, I'd rather get the whole lot for under £100.

My bank card's at the ready. Someone make up my mind for me?

 

yeah, there are 2 new formats sata and eide. i chose sata as the serial interface supposedly allows very high transfer speeds and the connectors / wires are nice and thin compared to the ribbons used for ide drives. i got this one for 13 quid and it's 98 se compatible too.
cheers


julian

 

mo,
the sata card i directed robbo at and this or this
will sort you out. as long as you are running 98se, me, 2000 or xp as your o/s. you'll be ok.

i have both of these drive and they work fine in my pII 400 192mb pc. although i upgraded to xp.

cheers


julian

 

How about getting a USB card from Maplins for about £20. It will fit into a vacant PCI slot and will give you one internal and four external USB 2.0 ports. Then you will have not only hard drive and other storage options but much mOre. You might need a driver for very large HDs. This can be downloaded from places like download.com

 

i had a usb external drive and it used a lot of processor power on my old laptop (a 1.1 ghz p3) - plus some external drives can overload the power specs of usb ports causing the machine to randomly crash. if you want external go with firewire although you pay a lot more for an external drive.
cheers


julian

 

Thanks

Should have mentioned I'm using XP Pro. <<I've a copy of Linspire (used to be Lindows) which I was thinking of giving a go at some point too, but will start with XP.....>>

I've heard bad things about Hitachi drives, and been heard best bet is a Samsung or Seagate.

I like the idea of using the SATA card. I've 3 PCI slots, with a 56k MOdem (unused but backup to USB BB MOdem) in PCI 2. The other two are free.

My current hard drive is in IDE1, with the DVD drive and the CD writer looped into IDE2.

There's also an empty ISA slot.

This is probably all trivial, but like I've said, I'm not too clued up on this.

Any chance of a complete idiot proof step by step guide of how to put the new hard drive in?

The drive I'm using now is ok at the min, but has died on me quite a few times. But, if possible i'd possibly still like to keep it in (if it's worth it???).

So wanting to know exactly how to install the new drive.

Thanks to all

 

Cheers Julian.

Did you buy your squeezebox direct from the US or is there somewhere in the UK that sells them?

Robbo

 

1) turn off machine.
2) open up machine
3) put sata card into a free pci slot.
4) put hard drive into spare 3.5 inch bay (or use a 5.25 bay with an adaper box)
5) connect power (the chunky white connector) to the hard drive
6) connect the sata cable to the hard drive.
7) boot the machine.
8) right click my computer
9) select manage
10) right click on the drive which is not marked as healthy (probably unformatted or something)
11) format this drive (i use ntfs as it lets you do whizzy things but fat 32 offers backwards compatibility)
12) transfer all your data from your old drive to your new one.

you may need to do something to make sure that you can boot from your new drive in the manage step (9 - 11) or there may be a jumper to make this new drive the master drive. or there may be a bios setting to choose (press del at bootup normally to enter the bios settings) however it may just all work automatically. i've only added drives to an existing install of windows so my experience runs out at this point. but i'd imagine something like this:
13) power down
14) remove the old drive.
15) boot up
16) put your win xp installation disc in the cd rom
17) reinstall xp to the new drive.

is necessary - perhaps someone else can confirm / correct?
cheers


julian

 

robbo,
i got mine from dabs. they were almost the cheapest and delivery was super quick - ordered on sunday night arrived monday lunchtime.
cheers


julian

 

http://www.slimdevices.com/au_resellers.html#uk

 

Julian. (and any and all else)

The new drive will be my main drive. Having thought about it, I'll just take the current one out. It's too unreliable to keep in. I've got everything I need back up onto CD off it anyway. And it's only 6GB.

That'll save on getting a bay adapter box.

Sorry to be a pain.

But I take it this might change the procedure?

I'm going for the SATA controller you rec'd and one of these http://www.dabs.com/uk/channels/hardware/storage/Product-Compare.htm?compareselect=2ZDT,2G01

probably the Samsung.......... unless anyone can suggest why not?

Cheers

 

tbh, i'd leave the origional one in whist getting it set up and then remove it and install windows. it'd probably make things a lot more simple.
cheers

julian

 

With the built in controller of a 1997 PC 8gb is probably the maximum. My motherboard is a cheap £30 thing and is 2 years old, it regonised my 80GB drive no problems.

You will not be able to buy a new drive unless you buy a seperate controller as other people have said.

 

Thanks AT

Do you fancy having a go at doing a complete step by step guide thingy just to confirm/correct what Julians said (not wanting to sound like I don't trust you Julian ). You've mentioned buildind a few computers so any help will be much appreciated

 

Julian
You mentioned NTFS in the instructions.
Does it mean that the SATA will also work with NT4.0 OS I use?

 

bluemax,
i'm not sure. nt4.0 isn't metioned in the 'compatibility' list for the card. although i think 2000 and xp are built on the NT core so you may be lucky. i've not had much experience with nt to be honest so i'm perhaps not the best person to answer this question.
cheers


julian