Which HDD

[milgo]

My MAXTOR 6L040J2 40Gb is full, do I add another HD or just have 1 with a larger capacity? The only thing i know about HDD is that a higher spin speed is better, but I keep seeing SATA & ATA & RAID mentioned? I'm in the process of updating the components of the PC so this will be part what I am doing. I hope to be putting together the following:
Athlon 2500+ BARTON
Asus A7N8X Deluxe or Abit NF7-S
ATI Radeon 9600 Pro
CORSAIR TWINX (2x 256MB XMS3200LL)

Any help/ suggestions on the HD would be most welcome

Thanks

[Allen]

You're HDD is a 7200RPM ATA133 model, you could get another identical model and run the in a RAID setup on the A7N8X board. Or you could get a SATA hard drive as you're main drive (as it should be faster) and use your Maxtor as a backup/storage drive.

[milgo]

Could i install another HD with the current MB that I have?. Is it best to keep programmes/ OS on one drive and the other as storage. Sorry if these questions sound dumb!

[TiG]

I would say its likely you could just stick another ATA133 Hard disk on the motherboard you've got, as long as you've got an IDE interface spare.

I'd guess its got at least 2 IDE channels, with Master/Slave options on both, so thats 4 Hard drives/CD Rom/CDRW/DVD drives that you can run on it in total.

Maybe pick up a 120GB 7200RPM Maxtor UDMA 133 drive for about £60 add it as the slave onto your machine, and partition it down the middle use one section for new program installs and the other for backup of mp3's data etc.

Don't be afraid to ask.
TiG

[0iD]

Alternatively (if u hav the cash) the Western Digital Raptor Serial ATA drive is blisteringly fast.
I use a raptor as my main drive with the o/s & games on & 2 80gig special edition Caviars for storage & backup. Boot time is well fast.

[silentphoenix]

You're HDD is a 7200RPM ATA133 model, you could get another identical model and run the in a RAID setup on the A7N8X board. Or you could get a SATA hard drive as you're main drive (as it should be faster) and use your Maxtor as a backup/storage drive.

Does the Asus a7n8x deluxe have Pata raid aswell? I thought it was only sata raid...

[acidrainy]

I recomend Abit NF7-S paired with a Maxtor SATA 160 (Bang for buck option)

I use this pair myself with 2x160's

[Allen]

Does the Asus a7n8x deluxe have Pata raid aswell? I thought it was only sata raid...

Stupid me, of course it doesn't. You'd need SATA drives to do a raid on the A7N8X Deluxe. Sorry!

[milgo]

Just slightly of topic but the 2 mobo's that i've mentioned, why would you say one was better that the other? I must admit that after looking at specs and stuff on the net I was leaning towards the ASUS. I think because they seem to almost identical in spec but the ASUS had firewire & additional USB ports!

[directhex]

samsung spinpoint p80!

[Lee H]

I use a set of seagate SATA drives on my NF7-S and a cream-crackered maxtor PATA HDD ( which has 2 IDE pins missing - still works @ 133 tho'......just ) and they are fairly fast for the cash

Lee

[blockers]

Go for the Abit, better

[streetster]

but why is it better blockers?

as for a new harddrive.. seeing as you are upgrading hte rest of your system you might aswell go for either 1 or 2 SATA drives (if 2 then possibly raid0 them for increased performance) i've got a 120gb maxtor9 drive and its pretty funky as harddrives go

mark

[Achaelus]

Anyone ever used a SAMSUNG 160GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive? The difference between the IDE and this SATA is about $13 U.S. Based on the conversation here I'm assuming that it is well worth it to go SATA in terms of speed correct?

[milgo]

Blockers! why is it better?

[acidrainy]

Blockers! why is it better?

Better BIOS, Features, relaibiliy.....er............ colour!