buying a new HD

Post by **Fender** » Mon Jan 16, 2006 1:48 pm

Are the SATA 3.0 Gb/sec drives compatible with older MBs that support SATA? I've got an ASUS A7N8X (pretty early revision) and I need a new HD. I'll have to double check when I get home, but I think it supports SATA onboard.

What's the current best value size? Most Gb/$. I'm thinking of staying cheap, $100 - $120, but if the price per GB is much better a size or 2 up, I'll go that route.

tia

edit: loooking online, I'm thinking my MB can only support ATA133, not SATA.

Post by **Tormentius** » Mon Jan 16, 2006 6:46 pm

The 200GB ATA-133 Seagate Barracuda's are a good and cost effective drive.

http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php? ... re=Seagate

Post by **Fender** » Mon Jan 16, 2006 8:34 pm

I'll need to reinstall XP as well. I'll want a slipstreamed SP2 install, so that it recognizes more than 128 GB, right?

Post by **AmIdYfReAk** » Mon Jan 16, 2006 9:22 pm

Sp1 will do more then 128gig's man

*remembers 400gig Raid0 on base XP install*

But sleepstreaming sp's is allways a good thing to do.

Post by **Fender** » Mon Jan 16, 2006 9:28 pm

Ahhh... ok it was sp1 that fixed that. Thanks
My xp cd has sp1 slipstreamed on it already, but I'll try to get my hands on an sp2 one or just make it myself.

Post by **Fender** » Tue Jan 17, 2006 4:15 am

I'm thinking of getting this one:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822144236
Is there really a performance difference between 8 and 16 MB caches?

Post by **Kills On Site** » Tue Jan 17, 2006 4:24 am

I can't say for certain, but I would think that the doubled cache would be a very nice thing to have. Also the MaxLine III series was developed for enterprises and has a million hour MTBF, which is very nice. I truly like Mator and that is a good hard drive at a good price.

As for the 128GB thing, I honestly don't know what Windows deal is, I installed Windows on a 200GB hard drive and don't recall if the installation had SP1 or not, but it worked. It was a Maxtor 200GB that I am still using right now.

Post by **obsidian** » Tue Jan 17, 2006 4:53 am

Fender, hope you don't mind me hijacking this thread a bit, but I'm also shopping for a new HD.

I'm thinking of getting one of these, 250GB 7200.9 8MB 11MS SATA2 NCQ RoHS:
http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php? ... omoid=1046

Odd thing, the 7800.8 reports a 8MS, yet the 7800.9 is supposedly faster but is 11MS. Wondering if that's a large issue? Any other suggestions?

Post by **Fender** » Tue Jan 17, 2006 1:24 pm

Kills On Site wrote:Also the MaxLine III series was developed for enterprises and has a million hour MTBF, which is very nice.

When used as in low I/O near offline storage solution. When used as a normal drive the MTBF is probably on par with regular drives. But the 5 year warranty for $2 more is nice, regardless.