Which hard drive ?

311

I've been looking at reviews of hard drives and I'm worse off than when I started.

I'm looking for a 500+ GB drive to go into a dell C521 ,I think the machine is SATA 3 .
Which one is best ?

Creamy Goodness

_Brian_ wrote:

I've been looking at reviews of hard drives and I'm worse off than when I started.

I'm looking for a 500+ GB drive to go into a dell C521 ,I think the machine is SATA 3 .
Which one is best ?

can't go wrong with samsungs/seagate for quiteness and reliability.

Western digital are build like houses aswell.

i've been out of the technology loop for a bit but as far as i'm aware there's no SATA 3 yet, SATA 2 definitely but SATA1 and SATA2 is backwards compatible like USB 1 & 2.

mathias

In all honesty , unless your looking for " Raptors in a raid configuration" for a super duper gaming machine , the cheapest one is the best !

Hard drive tech is well established , there is very little between any of them.

AlmightyCushion

I don't know if sata 3 is compatible with sata 2 or sata 1. If it isn't then you would have to go into the future to get a sata 3 drive as they don't exist yet. I presume you're board is sata II which has a transfer rate of 3.0Gbs. Any sata drive will work with this. Western digital are great hard drives.

311

Thanks for the replies ,I understand about the data rate now . I meant to say SATA II:)
Theres a western digital drive in the machine already ,so I may aswell get the same again.

Thanks

311

Eh ,exqueeze me . I'm not sure what type of cable I need for the hard drive ?
My motherboard has two sata connections free ,sata 3 ,sata 4.

mathias

Make sure you buy a SATA drive of course ,( as opposed to IDE ) and you need a SATA cable , like this ,

http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=115475

Also , just in case , what type of power connections does your PC have , does the power supply actually have SATA power connections , if not , you may need one of these as well

http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=115476

311

Thanks mathias ,just one other thing I've been thinking about in the mean time.

I got a external freeagent pro drive that has a USB and a SATA connection on it
If I use an accessory like this http://www.elara.ie/products/detailsfull.asp?productcode=MMEV930426 , can I split the SATA cable to do two external hard drives or is a SATA cable a dedicated connection to the bus ?

mathias

No , Sata cant be spliced , its one drive per connection I'm afraid, If you need more connectors you can get controller cards if you have a spare PCI slot.

http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=122969

311

Again thanks ,I'm glad it's dedicated (Faster)

I will eventually connect up the freeagent to the serial bus ,once microsoft fix up the problems with the software on the seagate drive for vista.

Is that card as throughput as an external drive would be on the motherboard directly ?

Nice one mathias.

kaizersoze

_Brian_ wrote:

I've been looking at reviews of hard drives and I'm worse off than when I started.

I'm looking for a 500+ GB drive to go into a dell C521 ,I think the machine is SATA 3 .
Which one is best ?

Emm, are you sure it's a C521? And if it is, are you replacing the existing drive or adding an extra one?
Any C521s I've handled only have space for 1 hard drive and only have 2 SATA connectors on the board. Both are ocupied, 1 by the HD and 1 by the DVD burner.

311

kaizersoze wrote:

Emm, are you sure it's a C521? And if it is, are you replacing the existing drive or adding an extra one?
Any C521s I've handled only have space for 1 hard drive and only have 2 SATA connectors on the board. Both are ocupied, 1 by the HD and 1 by the DVD burner.

It's got SATA3 SATA4 ports on the mobo ,I'd be adding a drive to the machine.

Machine in total at the moment is
4mb cahce 1.86 duo core
320 Sata hard drive
X1300 pro card
pvr 150 Mce card
Usb Xfi Xmod
Trust 61-1 reader
Philips MMS 321
3GB RAM
500GB free agent pro
20" ultra sharp dell.

kaizersoze

_Brian_ wrote:

It's got SATA3 SATA4 ports on the mobo ,I'd be adding a drive to the machine.

Not trying to be smart but are sure it's the C521 you have, maybe it's the E521? It's just that if it is the 'C' model I haven't seen one with extra SATA connectors or spare drive bays.

311

Sorry kaizer ,your right ,it's an E520.

SeanW

Western Digital FTW!