New HD Question

[Ron]

I need to purchase a new HD for an old computer. This http://
tinyurl.com/3bzscw is
what I currently have.

IBM Deskstar Model# DTPA-371360
ATA / IDE 3.5" buffer 2mb
13.6 GB 7200 RPM

I'm confused about the ATA / IDE info. All of the HD's I looked at
(online) have either
ATA / 100 or EIDE ATA / 100 written on them. Also, what does the
"buffer 2mb" mean?

What exactly do I need for a replacement?

Like I said, it's old only 600 Mhz, so I don't
wanna put a lot of money into it.

Any recommendations of what an where to purchase
is great appreciated!

TIA, in case the HD crashes!

 

[Grinder]

I need to purchase a new HD for an old computer. This http://
tinyurl.com/3bzscw is
what I currently have.

IBM Deskstar Model# DTPA-371360
ATA / IDE 3.5" buffer 2mb
13.6 GB 7200 RPM

I'm confused about the ATA / IDE info. All of the HD's I looked at
(online) have either
ATA / 100 or EIDE ATA / 100 written on them.

That's a data transfer rate. You want to get a drive that's at least as
fast as the controller in your PC. Almost all parallel ata drives for
sale now (new) are either ATA-100 or ATA-133, so you should be good there.

Also, what does the
"buffer 2mb" mean?

That's the drive cache. I suspect 2MB is sufficient for your needs.

What exactly do I need for a replacement?

You need a 3.5" parallel ATA internal hard drive, that's non-negotiable.
Some other factors:

Capacity: 120GB or less. (There's a BIOS limit that you might
run into if you get something larger.)

Cache: 2MB or more.

RPM: 7200 (Just matching what you had before.)

Xfer Rate: ATA-100 or better (Just matching what you had before.)

Like I said, it's old only 600 Mhz, so I don't
wanna put a lot of money into it.

Any recommendations of what an where to purchase
is great appreciated!

Good luck finding what you need.

 

[Ron]

That's a data transfer rate. You want to get a drive that's at least as
fast as the controller in your PC. Almost all parallel ata drives for
sale now (new) are either ATA-100 or ATA-133, so you should be good there.

So what does the IDE mean? I don't need to worry about that?

 

[kony]

I need to purchase a new HD for an old computer.

You ought to describe this old computer, especially the
motherboard make and model - a link to board specs might be
good.

This http://tinyurl.com/3bzscw is
what I currently have.

Your link was broken, now fixed.
Try to keep whole link on same line, thanks.

IBM Deskstar Model# DTPA-371360
ATA / IDE 3.5" buffer 2mb
13.6 GB 7200 RPM

I'm confused about the ATA / IDE info. All of the HD's I looked at
(online) have either
ATA / 100 or EIDE ATA / 100 written on them.

Lower ATA mode just means lower theoretical transfer speed.
They're backwards compatible so an ATA100 drive could run at
fastest speed a board supports, or vice-versa, a newer board
could run a lower ATA rated drive at the fastest speed the
drive supports. More significant is the age of the drive as
it relates to performance or capacity.

Also, what does the
"buffer 2mb" mean?

Data goes across the cable to the drive and has to be stored
before leaving the drive after read from the platter, or
waiting to be written to the platter.

A larger buffer can improve performance, with 2MB being
typical for that era of drive, soon moving up to 8MB, but
the performance difference is far less than that from moving
to a newer, larger drive... but we dont' know what drive
capacity your system will support as you didn't mention the
system/motherboard, and it might help to provide detail of
what bios version it uses, as HDD capacity support was often
increased with later board bios until boards started
supporting ATA133.

What exactly do I need for a replacement?

Like I said, it's old only 600 Mhz, so I don't
wanna put a lot of money into it.

I suggest a new model, and if the capacity exceeds what the
board can support, only using what capacity the board can
support. If you keep a lookout for deals you might find
something like a 120-160GB drive for about $30-40 after a
rebate.

A few old used drive (even moreso from ebay) is quite a
risk, it might be almost dead already, might have bad
sectors, might even be dead already or in an unknown state.

Any recommendations of what an where to purchase
is great appreciated!

TIA, in case the HD crashes!

Are you in the US?

Office Depot has a 160GB Western Digital for $50 after
rebates this week, there may be others cheaper, I haven't
kept track of current HDD deals on smaller drives. Check
your local newspaper sales circulars.

There are also some new drives from Newegg et al., whatever
you feel is the best priceerformance/capacity ratio,
keeping in mind that practically all HDD manufacturers are
using platters worth at least 160GB now, so anything below
80GB (using 1/2 one platter) will be slower... but maybe on
that 600MHz system the bottleneck isn't just the drive so
$10-20 saved might be worthwhile.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.asp?Submit=ENE&SubCategory=14&N=2010150014

I just wouldn't buy an old drive, only new stock 40GB or
larger, unless you had a local mom-n-pop computer shop that
guaranteed the fitness of the drive but sold it for dirt
cheap (maybe $10 or less total).

 

[Grinder]

So what does the IDE mean? I don't need to worry about that?

Beware the IDEs of March.

IDE is an acronym for integrated drive electronics. It and EIDE are
basically synonyms for *parallel* ATA (PATA). Just make sure your
getting a PATA drive and you'll be in good shape.

 

[mike]

That's a data transfer rate. You want to get a drive that's at least as
fast as the controller in your PC. Almost all parallel ata drives for
sale now (new) are either ATA-100 or ATA-133, so you should be good there.

I once had an ATA-33 motherboard that had problems with an ATA-100 drive.
This must have been a common problem, because the drive came with a
utility that switched it's default mode to ATA-33.
Or maybe it was ATA-66, but problem/solution was the same. Needed that
utility.
You just never know what evil lurks in old hardware.
mike

 

[Ron]

You ought to describe this old computer, especially the
motherboard make and model - a link to board specs might be
good.


Your link was broken, now fixed.
Try to keep whole link on same line, thanks.





Lower ATA mode just means lower theoretical transfer speed.
They're backwards compatible so an ATA100 drive could run at
fastest speed a board supports, or vice-versa, a newer board
could run a lower ATA rated drive at the fastest speed the
drive supports. More significant is the age of the drive as
it relates to performance or capacity.


Data goes across the cable to the drive and has to be stored
before leaving the drive after read from the platter, or
waiting to be written to the platter.

A larger buffer can improve performance, with 2MB being
typical for that era of drive, soon moving up to 8MB, but
the performance difference is far less than that from moving
to a newer, larger drive... but we dont' know what drive
capacity your system will support as you didn't mention the
system/motherboard, and it might help to provide detail of
what bios version it uses, as HDD capacity support was often
increased with later board bios until boards started
supporting ATA133.





I suggest a new model, and if the capacity exceeds what the
board can support, only using what capacity the board can
support. If you keep a lookout for deals you might find
something like a 120-160GB drive for about $30-40 after a
rebate.

A few old used drive (even moreso from ebay) is quite a
risk, it might be almost dead already, might have bad
sectors, might even be dead already or in an unknown state.





Are you in the US?

Office Depot has a 160GB Western Digital for $50 after
rebates this week, there may be others cheaper, I haven't
kept track of current HDD deals on smaller drives. Check
your local newspaper sales circulars.

There are also some new drives from Newegg et al., whatever
you feel is the best priceerformance/capacity ratio,
keeping in mind that practically all HDD manufacturers are
using platters worth at least 160GB now, so anything below
80GB (using 1/2 one platter) will be slower... but maybe on
that 600MHz system the bottleneck isn't just the drive so
$10-20 saved might be worthwhile.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.asp?Submit=ENE&SubCategory=...

I just wouldn't buy an old drive, only new stock 40GB or
larger, unless you had a local mom-n-pop computer shop that
guaranteed the fitness of the drive but sold it for dirt
cheap (maybe $10 or less total).

OK, here is what I have.

System Model
TYAN S1854 Trinity 400

Main Circuit Board
Board: 694X-596B-977
Bus Clock: 100 megahertz
BIOS: Award Software International, Inc. 4.51 PG 04/17/2000

Processor
600 megahertz Intel Pentium III
32 kilobyte primary memory cache
512 kilobyte secondary memory cache

Memory Modules
256 Megabytes Installed Memory

Drive
13.66 Gigabytes Usable Hard Drive Capacity

I've searched all over Google trying to find the specs on that board
and wasn't able to find them. I called Office Depot and "The Geek
Squad" told me due to the age of the motherboard I couldn't use a HD
bigger than 20GB.

Does that make any sense?????

BTW, blame Google for the F'ed up link. It was on one line when I
pasted it.

 

[mike]

Be careful with this. I've got motherboards that won't even recognize
a hard drive in excess of the bios limit. Sometimes there's a jumper on
the drive that makes it much smaller so you can use a drive overlay.
to get at the capacity up to what the OS supports.
Doesn't seem to be any way to tell except to try it.

If you keep a lookout for deals you might find

 

[kony]

OK, here is what I have.

System Model
TYAN S1854 Trinity 400

Main Circuit Board
Board: 694X-596B-977
Bus Clock: 100 megahertz
BIOS: Award Software International, Inc. 4.51 PG 04/17/2000

Processor
600 megahertz Intel Pentium III
32 kilobyte primary memory cache
512 kilobyte secondary memory cache

Memory Modules
256 Megabytes Installed Memory

Drive
13.66 Gigabytes Usable Hard Drive Capacity

I've searched all over Google trying to find the specs on that board
and wasn't able to find them. I called Office Depot and "The Geek
Squad" told me due to the age of the motherboard I couldn't use a HD
bigger than 20GB.

Does that make any sense?????

It makes sense that you would get a nonsense reply from the
Geek Squad, because they are more confidence than knowledge,
people that know a little about windows, a little about
selling, and a little about running an antivirus scanner.
Some of them may really know their stuff but taking to such
a person would be a lottery.

That board supports ATA66 from a Via VT82C596B southbridge,
should support at least up to 128GB. I saw no indication it
would support beyond 128GB but it is possible... if Tyan
didn't mention that in their bios update notes, but I would
assume it did not.

If you searched Google for "Tyan S1854" it would provide a
couple of links that seem non-functional, but using Google's
cache (link for each) will bring up the cached info, for
example,

http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cach...yan+S1854&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=us&lr=lang_en

In case that link doesn't work, here's the link on it to
the last bios Tyan released (AFAIK), I confirmed that link
direct to Tyan's FTP does work,
ftp://ftp.tyan.com/bios/1854v107.exe
That last bios is your best bet for running the largest HDD
possible while natively supported from the motherboard.

If you had a need for a larger drive than 120GB, I might
recommend a PCI, ATA133 controller card but Via chipsets of
that era had struggling PCI busses, it would drop
performance slightly in some scenarios, and without any
expressed need for post-128GB size support, it would seem an
unnecessary expense, better to just choose any current
generation drive of 120GB or less.

If for some reason you can't get the bios or other files I
have several of them archived, let me know if you need any
of them.

Also, your board (with at least one of the bios, maybe the
last) will run a Coppermine Tualatin CPU with a cheap
pin-adapter-only, adapter like this,
http://store.cwc-group.com/fctuadforso3.html
Since they're out of stock, the picture is for example
purposes only, these used to sell for about $4 and might be
available somewhere like a web forum for-sale listing or
ebay for about that price.

 

[Ron]

It makes sense that you would get a nonsense reply from the
Geek Squad, because they are more confidence than knowledge,
people that know a little about windows, a little about
selling, and a little about running an antivirus scanner.
Some of them may really know their stuff but taking to such
a person would be a lottery.

That board supports ATA66 from a Via VT82C596B southbridge,
should support at least up to 128GB. I saw no indication it
would support beyond 128GB but it is possible... if Tyan
didn't mention that in their bios update notes, but I would
assume it did not.

If you searched Google for "Tyan S1854" it would provide a
couple of links that seem non-functional, but using Google's
cache (link for each) will bring up the cached info, for
example,

http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:DE4_T3aEPuUJ:www.tyan.com/suppor...

In case that link doesn't work, here's the link on it to
the last bios Tyan released (AFAIK), I confirmed that link
direct to Tyan's FTP does
work,ftp://ftp.tyan.com/bios/1854v107.exe
That last bios is your best bet for running the largest HDD
possible while natively supported from the motherboard.

If you had a need for a larger drive than 120GB, I might
recommend a PCI, ATA133 controller card but Via chipsets of
that era had struggling PCI busses, it would drop
performance slightly in some scenarios, and without any
expressed need for post-128GB size support, it would seem an
unnecessary expense, better to just choose any current
generation drive of 120GB or less.

If for some reason you can't get the bios or other files I
have several of them archived, let me know if you need any
of them.

Also, your board (with at least one of the bios, maybe the
last) will run a Coppermine Tualatin CPU with a cheap
pin-adapter-only, adapter like >this,http://store.cwc-group.com/fctuadforso3.html
Since they're out of stock, the picture is for example
purposes only, these used to sell for about $4 and might be
available somewhere like a web forum for-sale listing or
ebay for about that price.

Cool!

Thanks a lot for your help!

And everyone else who responded!

 

[kony]

OOPS!

Above I wrote "Coppermine Tualatin" which is wrong. I meant
a Tualatin Celeron (or probably a Tualatin P3 too, but since
these were significantly more expensive at the time, it
wasn't as common an upgrade as the Tualatin Celeron.)

Also, many drives have a capacity limitation jumper. Take
the typical Seagate 7200.10 series HDDs for example, if you
put a jumper on the two pins nearest the power socket, it
will limit the capacity to 32GB enabling use on a board that
could only support up to 32GB, but I'm pretty confident your
board supports higher than 32GB, it was the prior
generations of boards like super-7 or slot 1 that had the
lower capacity limitations... some had bios updates to
improve them but some didn't.

 

[Ron]

OOPS!

Above I wrote "Coppermine Tualatin" which is wrong. I meant
a Tualatin Celeron (or probably a Tualatin P3 too, but since
these were significantly more expensive at the time, it
wasn't as common an upgrade as the Tualatin Celeron.)

Also, many drives have a capacity limitation jumper. Take
the typical Seagate 7200.10 series HDDs for example, if you
put a jumper on the two pins nearest the power socket, it
will limit the capacity to 32GB enabling use on a board that
could only support up to 32GB, but I'm pretty confident your
board supports higher than 32GB, it was the prior
generations of boards like super-7 or slot 1 that had the
lower capacity limitations... some had bios updates to
improve them but some didn't.

OK, I've narrowed it down to a Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 ST3802110A
80GB, Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 ST3402111A 40GB (both from Newegg) and
a Seagate 100GB from Tiger Direct that doesn't give a model number but
here is the link http://tinyurl.com/ywyztn

They are all the same total price - $50.00. So which one would you
recommend given the info you have on my computer? 40GB's is PLENTY for
me on this computer for now, but if I need more in the future I'll
better off with the 80GB or the 100GB (if they're compatible). I just
want to make SURE that whatever I get is going to work correctly.

I have a place here in town (Cheap Guys Computers) where I was going
to buy a Western Digital 80GB for $60, so if there were any problems
an exchange wouldn't be a problem, but ALL of their HDD are ATA-133.

 

[kony]

OK, I've narrowed it down to a Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 ST3802110A
80GB, Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 ST3402111A 40GB (both from Newegg) and
a Seagate 100GB from Tiger Direct that doesn't give a model number but
here is the link http://tinyurl.com/ywyztn

They are all the same total price - $50.00. So which one would you
recommend given the info you have on my computer?

Tiger Direct is a shady company and I wouldn't send them a
wooden nickel, so even ignoring that they show a retail box
but are are selling an OEM drive with only 1 year warranty
for $50 + S/H, I'd pass on that one.

40GB's is PLENTY for
me on this computer for now, but if I need more in the future I'll
better off with the 80GB or the 100GB (if they're compatible). I just
want to make SURE that whatever I get is going to work correctly.

Any board that supports 40GB will support 80GB, and part of
the reason for the larger drive even if you never, ever used
more than 40GB on it, is that using the first half of an
80GB drive is going to be higher performance than the
entirety of a 40GB drive, not even considering fragmentation
issues.

I have a place here in town (Cheap Guys Computers) where I was going
to buy a Western Digital 80GB for $60, so if there were any problems
an exchange wouldn't be a problem, but ALL of their HDD are ATA-133.

ATA133 is not a problem, it'll be backwards compatible to
the ATA66 your board supports. You will need an 80
conductor IDE cable to use ATA66, using an older 40
conductor would force it to run in ATA33 mode which is a
significant performance penalty with a modern drive. Some
(most) retail packaged drives come with the cable, but you
may need supply your own if you buy an OEM drive.

Of the choices you listed I'd go with the Seagate 80GB, or
if you found a 7200.10 generation Seagate for only slightly
more, that or another brand of 80GB with at least 3 year
warranty would be my preference.

If there is any realistic chance you might need more storage
in the future then I'd instead aim for 120GB size and other
factors as mentioned above. Often the price difference
isn't much until you get above 160GB, as that is what
current generation drives tend to have per-platter (though
now with perpendicular recording tech as with the Seagate
7200.10 series, that may be higher already).

 

[Ron]

Tiger Direct is a shady company and I wouldn't send them a
wooden nickel, so even ignoring that they show a retail box
but are are selling an OEM drive with only 1 year warranty
for $50 + S/H, I'd pass on that one.

Thanks for the tip will mark them off of the list.

Any board that supports 40GB will support 80GB, and part of
the reason for the larger drive even if you never, ever used
more than 40GB on it, is that using the first half of an
80GB drive is going to be higher performance than the
entirety of a 40GB drive, not even considering fragmentation
issues.


ATA133 is not a problem, it'll be backwards compatible to
the ATA66 your board supports. You will need an 80
conductor IDE cable to use ATA66, using an older 40
conductor would force it to run in ATA33 mode which is a
significant performance penalty with a modern drive. Some
(most) retail packaged drives come with the cable, but you
may need supply your own if you buy an OEM drive.

If I buy a ATA100 HDD it will run at ATA66 using my existing 40
conductor cable, correct?

Of the choices you listed I'd go with the Seagate 80GB, or
if you found a 7200.10 generation Seagate for only slightly
more, that or another brand of 80GB with at least 3 year
warranty would be my preference.

OK, will make sure about the warranty. Thanks!

 

[kony]

If I buy a ATA100 HDD it will run at ATA66 using my existing 40
conductor cable, correct?

No, you will need an 80 conductor cable to use the
motherboard's fastest, ATA66 mode with any hard drive no
matter whether that drive was spec'd as ATA66, 100, or 133.

As mentioned previously, retail packaged drives usually come
with the appropriate cable, though it is safer to assume an
OEM drive will not.

 

[Ron]

No, you will need an 80 conductor cable to use the
motherboard's fastest, ATA66 mode with any hard drive no
matter whether that drive was spec'd as ATA66, 100, or 133.

As mentioned previously, retail packaged drives usually come
with the appropriate cable, though it is safer to assume an
OEM drive will not.

I had only looked inside the computer one time when I was getting the
HD info, but upon further inspection, it has a 80 conductor cable. (I
was thinking that 80 conductor meant 80 pins, had to check Google to
see what the difference was)

I "think" I'm good to go now, just gotta order my HDD.

Thanks again! I now know where to come for future info.