Recommendations on Upgrading Hard Drive Storage?

[Cyde Weys]

My computer currently has two hard drives (one 40GB and one 120GB for a
total of 160GB). And I have two optical drives, so my motherboard is
full of IDE devices (2 channels, 2 devices per channel, 4 devices total).
I'm looking to buy another hard drive in the 160GB-250GB range (depends
on whatever is cheapest per GB). I want it to be as quiet as possible
(dorm room). Depending on how things go I may be getting it a buddy
hard drive shortly thereafter.
So, should I go with IDE or SATA? Either way I'm going to have to use
an add-in PCI card. Also, which manufacturers or specific drives do you
recommend?



Just some random background info:

I was originally looking at a PCI SATA RAID card and at least 5 HDs of
size 160-200GB running in RAID5 mode, but that was too expensive for
what I need: more data storage (for movies, music, games, whatever). I
don't really need the benefits of data backup nor the increased speed.
Also, the only SATA RAID card I found on NewEgg with 8 ports had a
review saying it got piss-poor RAID5 write speeds.

 

[Toshi1873]

My computer currently has two hard drives (one 40GB and one 120GB for a
total of 160GB). And I have two optical drives, so my motherboard is
full of IDE devices (2 channels, 2 devices per channel, 4 devices total).
I'm looking to buy another hard drive in the 160GB-250GB range (depends
on whatever is cheapest per GB). I want it to be as quiet as possible
(dorm room). Depending on how things go I may be getting it a buddy
hard drive shortly thereafter.
So, should I go with IDE or SATA? Either way I'm going to have to use
an add-in PCI card. Also, which manufacturers or specific drives do you
recommend?

Or an external 5400rpm drive in a USB/firewire enclosure
that you can power-down when not needed. That option
will work if you have USB 2.0 or Firewire ports.

Last I looked, barring sales, 160GB drives were the
sweet spot.

 

[Cyde Weys]

Or an external 5400rpm drive in a USB/firewire enclosure
that you can power-down when not needed. That option
will work if you have USB 2.0 or Firewire ports.

I have USB2 and FireWire ports, but this drive is going to be on all the
time.

 

[Jan Alter]

So?

Either way will get you your hard drive space.

The very nice thing about the external drive is that it allows you to move
it to other devices and with USB 2 has pretty reasonable data flow.

 

[John]

You can get Silicon Image cards and maybe some other types fairly
cheap on ebay. One of the few things I fell relatively confident about
getting on Ebay.

One thing about the add on card. Ive used one in the past with no
problems but recently used one with my Asus a7n8x deluxe since it only
has two IDE channels - the other is SATA. I generally run several HDs
and several CDand dvd drives.

So I got this Maxtor/Promise card with my 200 gig Maxtor.
Unfortuantely it seemed to hog the bus and I got lots of stuttering in
the sound. Horrendous. No matter where I moved the cards around. I
tried everything. Maybe theres another fix for it that can cure it but
I ended up taking it out and buying Sata converters for my IDE drives.
Unfortunately the SATA connections only take one drive each so I can
only have 6 devices total hooked up.

Why do you need THAT much storage online immediately?
I have 200 + 120 now - I got rid of all my smaller HDs and I dont get
anywhere near filling them up for stuff I need immediately and I have
tons and tons and tons and tons of stuff. You can store it on DVDs.
Right now its true Im topped up - Im close to filled but thats because
I get incredibly lazy and just let things pile up. If I really cleaned
up junk I dont need immediately probably 200 gigs would be cleared off
easy.

The external hard disk sound attractive though. I bought a WD 40 gig
for the hell of it since it was rebate sale and am actually using it
to store stuff on but I have to plug and unplug it on an IDE cable
though.

 

[Stacey]

I have USB2 and FireWire ports, but this drive is going to be on all the
time.

Still, a firewire drive is an easy solution.