SATA Hard Drive Enquiry

frankled

I have an old Dell, a Dimension 8400. Bought in 2004, the HD failed in 2005 or 2006; Blue Screen of Death first followed by HD not found. Dell replaced the HD with a 250mb Western Digital SATA drive.

Now that HD has failed, I don't know why. I have the data backed up so no loss there, I'm ideally looking for a really cheap/free option to get the computer going again. I don't know if the drive is 5400rpm or 7200rpm, would I be limited to either in an upgrade? Capacity isn't an issue, once it'd be enough to carry Windows XP and about 10 or 20 gb storage. The computer isn't used much, I just want it to be functional.

Would this do? Any easier options?

Thanks

briany

You might want to look at purchasing a solid state drive with a SATA II interface like a 60 GB OCZ Octane which goes new for about 60-70 euros. One should work in an older computer provided that the computer has the requisite SATA power and data connectors inside (you may need some sort of data converter like PCI to SATA or USB to SATA). SSDs, as you may know, have no moving parts and therefore are not vulnerable to mechanical failure like standard HDDs are. Lots of system builders are using them as a standalone drive for the OS and the most used programs because they are much quicker than a HDD. You may not see a huge performance boost because the other components in that old system would bottleneck it but you would get a boost to some degree as well as having a drive that's not only more reliable but also quieter and doesn't consume as much power.

frankled

briany wrote: »

You might want to look at purchasing a solid state drive with a SATA II interface like a 60 GB OCZ Octane which goes new for about 60-70 euros. One should work in an older computer provided that the computer has the requisite SATA power and data connectors inside (you may need some sort of data converter like PCI to SATA or USB to SATA). SSDs, as you may know, have no moving parts and therefore are not vulnerable to mechanical failure like standard HDDs are. Lots of system builders are using them as a standalone drive for the OS and the most used programs because they are much quicker than a HDD. You may not see a huge performance boost because the other components in that old system would bottleneck it but you would get a boost to some degree as well as having a drive that's not only more reliable but also quieter and doesn't consume as much power.

Thanks for the help. To be honest I'm a bit out of touch with a lot of this, the above sounds slightly too complicated at the moment and I'd probably just be looking for an easier fix, even if your suggested method is the more sensible option. I think I'm just looking for a similar replacement, although capacity is not really an issue. If a cheap second hand SATA drive would last a few years (the desktop wouldn't be used an awful lot) then I'd be happy. Does the drive speed matter? I don't mind if it'd be slower i.e. 5400rpm, once it works sufficiently.

Again, thanks for the help.

frankled

Although I understand a 'cheap second hand' option might bring the same result down the line. Is this problem common does anybody know?

FruitLover

It's certainly not uncommon, put it that way. If all you want is to get the system up and running again cheaply, the Maxtor drive should be fine. It'll inevitably fail too, eventually, but that's the nature of mechanical hard disks.

Akarinn

BOOM! Cheap, fast and effective...

http://www.amazon.co.uk/WD-Raptor-WD740GD-internal-SATA-150/dp/B0002340WY/ref=sr_1_3?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1332279404&sr=1-3

briany

frankled wrote: »

Thanks for the help. To be honest I'm a bit out of touch with a lot of this, the above sounds slightly too complicated at the moment and I'd probably just be looking for an easier fix, even if your suggested method is the more sensible option. I think I'm just looking for a similar replacement, although capacity is not really an issue. If a cheap second hand SATA drive would last a few years (the desktop wouldn't be used an awful lot) then I'd be happy. Does the drive speed matter? I don't mind if it'd be slower i.e. 5400rpm, once it works sufficiently.

Again, thanks for the help.

Drive speed doesn't usually matter if the main purpose of the drive is storage. Well, it does still matter, it's just not as important unless it's in a system where performance is a key issue. If it's just for occasional work and things then going for 5400 shouldn't go against you but if you see a 7200 at a good price then why not? If not the SSD then what Akarinn suggests looks perfectly fine (10,000 rpm!). The reason I suggested the SSD was because of their invulnerability to failure, mechanical failure anyway, and the boost in performance it can give. Yes, there would likely be problems in hooking it up to an older motherboard and XP doesn't natively support SSDs as far as I know but there are workarounds for both. It is a bit involved so unless you're taking the computer to a tech it wouldn't be the best option in the short term.

frankled

FruitLover wrote: »

It's certainly not uncommon, put it that way. If all you want is to get the system up and running again cheaply, the Maxtor drive should be fine. It'll inevitably fail too, eventually, but that's the nature of mechanical hard disks.

I see what you mean. The idea of this is to have the desktop there, and functional. I have my laptop, which is much more recent, so performance isn't an issue.

Akarinn wrote: »

BOOM! Cheap, fast and effective...

http://www.amazon.co.uk/WD-Raptor-WD740GD-internal-SATA-150/dp/B0002340WY/ref=sr_1_3?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1332279404&sr=1-3

Ha cool thanks, I'll keep it in mind.

briany wrote: »

Drive speed doesn't usually matter if the main purpose of the drive is storage. Well, it does still matter, it's just not as important unless it's in a system where performance is a key issue. If it's just for occasional work and things then going for 5400 shouldn't go against you but if you see a 7200 at a good price then why not? If not the SSD then what Akarinn suggests looks perfectly fine (10,000 rpm!). The reason I suggested the SSD was because of their invulnerability to failure, mechanical failure anyway, and the boost in performance it can give. Yes, there would likely be problems in hooking it up to an older motherboard and XP doesn't natively support SSDs as far as I know but there are workarounds for both. It is a bit involved so unless you're taking the computer to a tech it wouldn't be the best option in the short term.

Yeah I'll probably go with the straightforward option. As I said it'll be for occasional use so I'll probably pick the cheapest option. I even considered second-hand, although that might be pointless given the possibility of it happening again. Once the speed isn't limited. Any SATA drive will do I take it? Once it's 3.5 inch?

briany

Size wouldn't be as big an issue as compatibility with what's already inside the machine. Obviously you want your drive to fit in a bay but that would be worthless if you couldn't get the thing to power up or boot up. So long as connectors are compatible in whatever you choose, you should be good.

Kirby

FruitLover wrote: »

It'll inevitably fail too, eventually, but that's the nature of mechanical hard disks.

Not all drives are built equal. I've used about a dozen mechanical drives over the last ten years. Only had one failure in all that time. I have a drive in my machine thats been used everyday for the last 5 years and never had an issue with it.

Most people will replace hardware within 5 or 6 years at the most. "Eventually" is a relative term.

frankled

So I went with the 80gig Maxtor above, at €20 it serves the purpose. Thanks for the help lads. (Edit: not lads, everyone )

pprendeville

Need to replace my hard drive as well as I'm getting an error message on startup saying the hard drive is going to fail soon and to perform a HDD self check. I've got a HP Compaq 8710W Mobile Workstation with 4Gb RAM running on Windows XP. 

I'm contemplating getting a solid state HD. I believe there are a few issues with XP so I'm also considering upgrading to Windows 7.   
How can I find out whether a solid state HD will slot into the laptop and work without any problems, i.e. does the laptop have necessary SATA power and data connectors inside as previosly mentioned by briany? 

Would anyone know of a walk through website that tells me how to copy the existing contents of the current hard drive and put them on the replacement. I downloaded software here (http://www.todo-backup.com/) for copying the hard drive. Anyone any experince with this or recommend me free software for cloning the contents of a harddrive. I don know will this be sufficient or will I need to get drivers for everything as well? Can't really afford to bring it to a shop so would appreciate some advice.

Anyone used this out of interest? http://www.acronis.com/enterprise/download/backup-recovery/workstation/

Echoes675

briany wrote: »

SSDs, as you may know, have no moving parts and therefore are not vulnerable to mechanical failure like standard HDDs are.

This is true however, the the drives do have a limited number of writes to each sector. The current disks on the market have an expected lifespan of 5 about years.

briany

eoin_mcg wrote: »

This is true however, the the drives do have a limited number of writes to each sector. The current disks on the market have an expected lifespan of 5 about years.

I thought that the 5 year lifespan was the minimum and was applicable to SSDs that were being written and overwritten to on a pretty constant basis. Most people aren't using SSDs for storage right now, especially something like a Crucial M4 64/128GB but more for the OS and other software. 5 years is a long time in the world of computing hardware and the SSDs of today will be likely obsolete be then anyway, especially if they figure out a way to keep the speed while upping the capacity but yes there may still be some caught out by the lifetime limitations of the current gen.

I'm contemplating getting a solid state HD. I believe there are a few issues with XP so I'm also considering upgrading to Windows 7.
How can I find out whether a solid state HD will slot into the laptop and work without any problems, i.e. does the laptop have necessary SATA power and data connectors inside as previosly mentioned by briany?

Well what you could do is find out the make and model of your current HDD in your device manager and then go look that up to see what type of connectors it uses, then compare them to a current SSD and that should give you an idea of the compatibility of the hardware.

BostonB

Hard drives fail from time to time, but it would be unusual to have one after another. Perhaps theres some other issue like AC spikes (use a surge protector) or the PC is poorly cooled (clean out dust etc).

CapBean

Been flicking through posts and just came across this one.

Anyone who thinks a Solid State Drive is the answer to long term data storage needs to read more about their limitations.
SSD's do fail and they are mechanical drives just not in the same way as a HDD. The SSD memory chips work by switching electrical states. This does cause wear and tear on the memory cells as the memory gates switch states. SSD's get around this by not writing to the same cells all the time and moving the data writes to the least used cells hopefully prolonging the drives life.
The 5 year mean time to failure quoted doesn't mean that the drive only fails after 5 years. It means that in 5 years the drive has aquired so many dead cells as to be unuseably.
If you have an old computer and your thinking of adding an SSD, check that the OS your using supports the SSD trim / erase commands. Not all old OS's support this feature. Without the trim / erase commands the SSD will slow down over time and be worse than an HDD, as happend with the Version 1 SSD drives when they first came out.
If your looking for information on SSD's I've always found the Tomshardware website usefull, lots of info and testing done.

frankled

BostonB wrote: »

Hard drives fail from time to time, but it would be unusual to have one after another. Perhaps theres some other issue like AC spikes (use a surge protector) or the PC is poorly cooled (clean out dust etc).

Just noticed your reply there, dust could have been a factor, I thoroughly cleaned the machine regardless.