Upgrading hard drives

Dempsey · 25-09-2002 3:11pm #1

Is there any difficulty from a hard drive that ATA 100 to ATA 133 or ATA 66 - 100 or ATA 66 - 133 etc. ?

What is the best, money no object and whats the best drive with price in mind ?

netman · 25-09-2002 3:21pm

you can check out http://www.storagereview.com for the most extensive hard drive reviews out there.

if your question was, is there any difficulty in upgrading from ata100 to ata133, or ata66 to ata100/133, no there isn't. all drives should be downward compatibile, so you can hook up an ata133 drive to an ata33 controller and it will work fine.

as far as the benefits are concerned, you'll notice that the latest and fastest hard drives can reach speeds of about 45MB/s, which means ata66 is more than enough for them. there's a slight difference in performance between ata66 and ata100 controllers, due to burst speeds, but those are minimal. and there's virtually no difference between ata100 and ata133.

personally, i'd go with western digital special edition drivers (BB series) that have 8MB cache. they're available in sizes from 80GB to 200GB.

Dempsey · 25-09-2002 3:42pm

Cheers, would you notice the difference in speed, on boot up or anything or is it allround?

netman · 25-09-2002 6:13pm

well, the hard drive being the slowest part of a computer system, you'd definitely notice an improvement by getting a faster hard drive. i doubt you'd notice much difference between say ibm 120gxp and western digital special edition, but you'd definitely notice a difference between those and previous generation drives.

strat · 26-09-2002 8:40am

make sure its 7200 rpm over a 5400 anyway - for performance sake

Dempsey · 26-09-2002 4:03pm

How would you check which ATA your hard drive is?

Dempsey · 01-10-2002 3:49pm

I was thinking of getting a Seagate Barracuda IV, They say there is no cable but the cable off the old hard drive would do, wouldn't it?

The_Conductor · 01-10-2002 4:12pm

If you have a UDMA cable yes- if its one of the old 48 pin IDE cables- no.
UDMA cables normally have one of the end blocks a nice "blue" colour.

S.

Inspector Gadget · 01-10-2002 4:15pm

Originally posted by dempseyt
I was thinking of getting a Seagate Barracuda IV, They say there is no cable but the cable off the old hard drive would do, wouldn't it?

Yes and no. If your previous drive was ATA66 or ATA100, and as such had one of the 80-conductor cables, then it'll be fine; if not, the 40-conductor cable will still work, but in ATA-33 "mode", so you're losing much (but not all) of the advantage of buying a fast drive. Make sure you have a new-type cable.

For the record, the differences between the ATA-66/100 cables and the ATA-33 cables (and below) are:

every second conductor on the ATA-66/100 cables is tied to ground to help reduce electrical "crosstalk" between otherwise-adjacent conductors;
Cable Select does what it says on the tin; and
The positions of the master and slave sockets on the cable are opposite; ATA-33 and below have the master in the middle and ATA-66 has the master at the end. (The latter makes more sense from a signalling point of view)

Read this if you need more info on the subject.

Hope this helps,
Gadget

Dempsey · 09-10-2002 11:22am

I'll have the new hard drive on friday, i think. I want to put everything from the old disk to the new.
The old disk is partitioned into 3 drives, cos of win95 but i have win98se now, does it complicates things cos I was going to copy and paste everything?
I only want to reinstall everything as a last resort because i have downloaded all the updates for win98se aswel as other reasons.

Mr. Fancypants · 09-10-2002 11:25am

Wont be able to copy and paste if it is the Windows partition that you are moving as a lot of windows files will be open at the time.
Think you can do it if you boot to DOS and XCOPY the files over. Or you could get something like GHOST and create an image to copy over.......

Dempsey · 09-10-2002 11:34am

I would like to stay away from GHOST, costs money. have you used XCOPY?

Inspector Gadget · 09-10-2002 12:25pm

...is that the Barracuda IV gets hot. VERY hot. Hotter than most other drives, in fact - this is primarily down to the large amount of noise insulation in the drive.

I suggest you get a 5-1/4" -> 3-1/2" drive mounting frame and stick the drive into one of your 5-1/4" bays (assuming you have one free and your cables can reach OK) as it allows for more airflow around the drive. For what it's worth, I did just that with a 60GB 'cuda IV in my box (using a 5-euro no-name drive mounting frame from Komplett).

FYI...
Gadget

Dempsey · 09-10-2002 12:42pm

No, I actually got the Western Digital Caviar 80GB IDE 7200RPM
Special Edition 8MB cache. The old disk should be able to work on a 80-conductor cable?

all drives should be downward compatibile, so you can hook up an ata133 drive to an ata33 controller and it will work fine.

Can you upgrade the controller, would it make a difference?

Inspector Gadget · 09-10-2002 12:47pm

Originally posted by dempseyt
No, I actually go the Western Digital Caviar 80GB IDE 7200RPM
Special Edition 8MB cache. The old disk should be able to work on a 80-conductor cable?

I see. I don't have any first-hand experience of that drive, but I can tell you that the old drive will work no problem on the 80-conductor cable.

Originally posted by dempseyt
Can you upgrade the controller, would it make a difference?

Yes and no. Your IDE controller can't actually be "updated"; however, it is possible to buy IDE controllers on PCI cards that you can install to give you ATA100/ATA133 support on a motherboard that doesn't come with it.

However, if you follow this approach you'd be advised to disable the onboard IDE controllers (in the BIOS) as there may be some confusion as to what disk to boot from first... (the BIOS may calf if it can't find a drive on the onboard IDE if enabled - the "Hard Disks Fail" message...)

Gadget

Dempsey · 09-10-2002 2:45pm

Has anyone ever used a PCI ATA Controller? Does using this type of controller gives a dramatic performance increase or just a slight improvement?

Does anyone have a good suggestion for copying the paritioned hard disk onto the new disk, is Norton Ghost the best option or is there a alternative?

Blade · 09-10-2002 5:53pm

Originally posted by dempseyt
No, I actually got the Western Digital Caviar 80GB IDE 7200RPM Special Edition 8MB cache

Thats the one I got my eye on too, I think you made a good choice, bout 140 euro from komplett yeh? I was told by someone else who has one that it doesn't get too hot, can you confirm this is the case?

Cheers

byte · 09-10-2002 7:54pm

Go for it Blade, and I assure you, it doesn't get hot. Just a wee bit warm and it's pinned beside an old Quantum slave.

If ya have the money though, maybe you could go the whole hog and get the 120GB version. I thought I wouldn't need it but now I only have 5GB free! :rolleyes: And I only have it a few months!:D

/me sez get the WD, it's the r0x0rs!*

*this was a shameless plug!

po0k · 09-10-2002 8:06pm

http://www.anandtech.com/guides/viewfaq.html?i=53

Full explanation of the standards. Highly reccomended reading.

Also, with regard mounting the 3.5" drive in a 5.25" bay, no need for brackets.
Get some sort of elastic material from a drapers/shoelaces and create a brace around the drive.
It will reduce noise caused by the drive vibrating against the metal case (which uses the space around the mobo to amplify the sound).

po0k · 09-10-2002 8:13pm

Originally posted by dempseyt
Has anyone ever used a PCI ATA Controller? Does using this type of controller gives a dramatic performance increase or just a slight improvement?

If you get a newer IDE controller chipset that supports higher standards (eg UDMA100) compared with your onboard controller (eg UDMA33) then yes you will have a higher performance with drives that take advantage of it.
However, afaik the onboard IDE controller is on the PCi Bus, as will your new card, which afaik, has a bandwidth of 135MBit/sec off the northbridge.
I'm curious myself as to whether each slot has 135Mbit, or whether it's shared. I was under the impression it was shared, but I'm not so sure any longer.

Dempsey · 10-10-2002 4:08pm

Originally posted by Blade
Thats the one I got my eye on too, I think you made a good choice, bout 140 euro from komplett yeh? I was told by someone else who has one that it doesn't get too hot, can you confirm this is the case?

I'll be able to tell you saturday by then ill be able to give an opinion. I dont need 120Gb, cos I have a burner and another PC with 120Gb, plenty of space.

I have being recommended Partition Magic to unpartition the old drive without formatting, is this true? XCOPY won't work cos it doesn't copy system or hidden files.

Blade · 10-10-2002 7:01pm

I'd be movin up from a 9 GIG! So 80's loads like, plus I don't like the idea of having 1 Hugh drive when you can have 2 smaller ones in case one of them crashes. It's nice to have important data copied on 2 drives. I'd say it would be a real bummer to loose 120 gig worth of data! Works out a fair bit dearer I know but

Dempsey · 12-10-2002 10:08am

I didn't get the drive, dhl, the boys that deliver for komplett messed up the delivery, I'm fairly pi$$ed off about it. It will arrive monday. I won't be back until next weekend because of college and I am very busy next weekend. As far as their overnight delivery is concerned I think its a load of $hit.

They have messed twice, blaming it on my address and its accessibility. Well I can see and HEAR traffic on the main cork/dublin road . At MOST my house is 1km off the main road, I don't find their excuses acceptable at all. According to tracking they took the package from dublin to cork to UK then to shannon. Need I say more?

byte · 12-10-2002 11:19am

Originally posted by Blade
I'd be movin up from a 9 GIG! So 80's loads like, plus I don't like the idea of having 1 Hugh drive when you can have 2 smaller ones in case one of them crashes. It's nice to have important data copied on 2 drives. I'd say it would be a real bummer to loose 120 gig worth of data! Works out a fair bit dearer I know but

Well I moved from 10 Giggle to 80 but it's not enough! But now that my Europe Online sub is expired, I may not need much more HDD space now!

And you do have a point regarding losing 120GB of stuff. I am worried I might have to reinstall W2k to try fix my USB/Parallel problems but I guess I could try saving my best media and mp3 files to CD or my 10GB slave! But I'm hoping it won't come to that! :rolleyes:

Upgrading hard drives

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