which HD?

Me__2001

Me__2001

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im going to get a new hard drive within the next week or so and am unsure as to whether i should get a Maxtor 200GB SATA, im assuming that it is possible to run an ATA master and a SATA slave? i will also be getting a new Tagan 420W PSU as my current one won't cope with the extra drive as it doesn't have any free connectors

mobo is a Asus P4C800 Deluxe and im using XP on a 120GB ATA
 
I have the WD P-ATA HD drive running as master and a Seagate Barracuda S-ATA running as a slave, no problems whatsoever.

It is very difficult for anyone to tell you which one to go for, all brands have success and failure stories, in the end the one which lasts longer is the best. :)
 
i was going to get a maxtor as i have one and i've had no problems i just wanted to check if i could use the SATA drive as a slave, the Mobo instructions aren't really clear on running SATA and P-ATA drives together

thanks
 
If your current master disk is configured as master and holds your OS, then the SATA drive should automatically configure as a slave.

You will have to load the SATA drivers, they should be on your motherboard CD.

Most SATA drives don't have jumpers, btw, they automatically configure.

What is your current PSU rating? If it's about 300W or 350W, you may be OK and just need to buy a PSU molex to SATA power connector/splitter lead.

As for which make of HDD, just stick to name brands: Western Digital; Maxtor; Samsung; Hitachi; Seagate.

I've used just about every brand and have good and bad to say about all of them.
 
my current PSU is a generic 400W but is only rated a 5A on the 12V rail and im already drawing more than that and dont want to risk putting any more components on it, i have two molex splitters and leads that came with my Mobo. i downloaded and installed all of the latest drivers earlier. so do i just plug it in and format it?
 
I can highly recommend you getting the Tagan PSU, they are excellent units, and are very well respected everywhere.

As for your HDD, there should be no issues at all in running it as a slave, as it should set itself up automatically. I particularly like the Seagate Barracuda line of hard disks as I have always used them with great success, but then many users of other brands will say the same. You should have no trouble with a maxtor either though as it too is one of the major brands, and many have made good comments about them.
 
do i make a partition and format by :

create a boot disk with Fdisk on it
change bios and boot using the floppy
run Fdisk and create a primary partition and format

or do i plug it in boot into windows and create a partition and format using Start>run> compmgmt.msc , make a new partition then format?

will the disk show in windows?
 
Me_2001

tbh ive been through maxtor, western digital, fujitsu and now seagate

and out of them all i cant reccomend any because they have all let me down. what really annoys me is that for me everytime i get a new harddrive its DEAD silent but then after 6-8 months all harddrives ive ever handled seem to get very loud.

i do rememeber on this site some1 asking abt the best harddrive make and the comment was like this:

"it all depends if ur harddrive comes from agood batch or a bad batch"
luck of the draw

and everytime ive been very unlucky!
 
Me__2001 said:
do i make a partition and format by :

create a boot disk with Fdisk on it
change bios and boot using the floppy
run Fdisk and create a primary partition and format

or do i plug it in boot into windows and create a partition and format using Start>run> compmgmt.msc , make a new partition then format?

will the disk show in windows?
Click to expand...
Boot to Windows ... always use NTSF with XP

As for your PSU, I would change it ... anything under 8watt is really crap.

:thumb:
 
i was amazed that my pc even booted when i calculated how much current was drawn i think its in the region of 7A with all components running , i've been planning on doing it for a while but decided to put it off until i needed another HD
 
If i was you i would go for a Samsung or Seagate drive...;)


For the simple reason that most hard drive manufacturers reduced the terms of there warranty from three or five year warranties down to just one, Clearly as a cost cutting measure...

Although as you can see in my signature i own two Maxtors which i have not had any problem with, probably down to my harddock cooling rack doing a good job....

From very recently I now restrict my hard drive purchases to those manufacturers prepared to stand by the reliability of there drives..

Both Samsung and Seagate still offer an extended warranty on there drives of three and five years respectively...:thumb:

Keeping a hard drive cool is the key to running a drive to its maximum potential for reliability...Hard drives are also happiest when spinning at a constant rate, so try not to turn your pc on and off too many times a day unnecessarily...

If your Overclocking make sure that the Pci bus is fixed at a standard multiple of the Fsb, as running the IDE bus out of specification can cause damage to your drives and corrupted data...

Hope thats helped you to make a decision...:D
 
Me__2001 said:
do i make a partition and format by :

create a boot disk with Fdisk on it
change bios and boot using the floppy
run Fdisk and create a primary partition and format

or do i plug it in boot into windows and create a partition and format using Start>run> compmgmt.msc , make a new partition then format?

will the disk show in windows?
Click to expand...

If it's just going to be a slave, your best bet is to sort it all out from windows, you may have to set up the bios first though depending on how it is currently configured.
 
ive had issues with seagate i had one for about a year got a message from the hd saying imgonna have iminate failure. so i bought a crappier new one loud as hell lol but what can you do. Just my 2 sense
 
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