Need advice on an HDD

[Veles]

Came home from uni today and just set up my PC to find it's gone completely mad, object dock, as well as a few other programs, have reset to thier original settings for some reason...ah yeah may have something to do with a freeze I had when playing BF2, had to turn it off as it was completely frozen, and didn't bother checking if it was ok cos I had to pack it up.

But anyways, I just noticed I am running low on storage space anyway, I was planning on getting a raptor for windows and progs, and a big 500GB drive to keep all my data on (I would keep the current drive as a backup for important stuff). Probelm is, the raptor is very expensive so that's out of the question for now.

I now want to buy a big HDD and then reformat my current 250GB and make that my system drive and have the big one as a data drive as originally planned.

A couple of questions, firstly, can you reccomend me a good quality big HDD, I've heard deskstars are very good.

Second, I've heard you can copy over a few files to your reinstall of windows so you don't have to faff around with silly MS activation crap but only if the hardware is exactly the same. If I put the deskstar in and copy my data across then reformat the system drive (turning it from a 2 partion drive to 1), would this stop me being able to use this work around for XP activation?

Thanks for any help.

EDIT: Was thinking of buying this one http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=228981

[Steve B]

as far as im concerned, i wouldn't touch the deskstars. Ive heard they get nicknamed the deathstars as they have a tendency to blow up.

also, unless you've only got one free SATA port or are absolutely anal about noise, id say u get 2x250G samsung spinpoint P120's. It'll save u a few bob, and its not really that much louder, maybe a few decibels at the most.

another disadvantage is if you have 1x500Gig drive, if it fails u lose everthing, but if you've got 2x250s then u only lose half

The new raptor with 16meg cache is coming out (if not out already) so the older 8meg cache ones should be going down in price. I picked up a 36.6 gig one off these forums for 50 inc so they're getting cheaper.

with reference to the hard drive swap, i dont think theres a way to totally replicate the registry, so theres no way to directly copy over all the files and just boot from the other HDD. you could use a program like norton ghost to create an image of the drive, and load it onto the other drive, as long as the letter from the new drive was the same as the old one (so the registry entries still match up).

Hope this helps,
Steve

[Shmee150]

I've got a 400gb Hitachi Deathstar (lol) that's lasted a good year now, so I wouldn't put them down too much - and it runs a lot cooler than my newer 400gb seagate barracuda in the same machine.

ShMeE

[awm]

I believe the bad name came from when IBM owned the line. Hitachi has done a much better job (I think I have one and it hasn't given me any trouble).

[Veles]

Yeah I've heard about the deskstars poor reliability, but I've also heard from some good sources that they're also really good. Maybe it's just the older ones that are bad but then again maybe the sources got lucky.

Oh yeah, and hers how you can apparently reinstall windows wothout the activation troubles: http://netsecurity.about.com/od/wind...twinxp0829.htm

I'm not sure whether changing how the HDD is formatted would stop me being able to do it this way.

[pr0p4g4nd4]

Yah, it was the IBM "deathstars" which were bad, the 'tachi's are much better. I'd personally go for a WD or a Seagate. Perhaps a Sammy Spinpoint if you're after something a tad quieter.

[TheVoice]

The new Seagates (the 7200.10s) are probably the best large drives you can get right now. Very quick, and of course they have the 5-year Seagate warranty.

[Clunk]

ive still got 2 of the deathstars, a 40 gig from 2001 and an 80gig from 2002. both still in perfect working order. the 80 gig has a slight whine to the bearings but nothing that a squirt of wd40 wont sort out*








*i was only joking. everyone knows that olive oil is best for hard drives

[Jonny]

I'd get a Seagate. Nice, quiet drives.
I've had a Deathstar and a Maxtor die on me - and as a result I only buy Seagate now!
(Aside from my Raptor). One of my Seagates was so hardcore that it fixed itself after it died...

[davidstone28]

The Hitachis are fine for reliability. The Deskstar / Deathstar tag comes from the IBM Desktars from many years ago which were prone to failure, and even then it was a specific model - the IBM Deskstar 75GXP.

The current Hitachi deskstars are no more or no less reliable than any other major brand.

[jamiecockrill]

i bought a samsung spinpoint from Scan the other day and it's quiet as a mouse. If that's the sort of thing you're after!

[ash_rm]

I used to have one of the old deathstars, I think it was a 40GB version. It failed after about a year, but was a very fast drive while it lasted!

Both my sister and dad have Dell computers which have 120GB IBM/Hitachi drives and have been running well for the last 2-3yrs.

Check out some reviews on storagereview.com - The Hitachi's (250GB +) look very good for single drive performance.

When it comes to the MS Activation stuff and doing a fresh install on the new HDD, you should be fine if your just replacing your HDD as its only when you change motherboard, CPU etc things get a little tricky.

If happy with your current windows install then I would also recommend Norton Ghost to image your old drive to the new one. You could then use Partition Magic or the free gparted live cd to change the partitions to a single one.

I would recommend keeping the 2 partitions though with your important data on the 2nd partition.

[Veles]

I've heard that the newer seagates wern't actually that great (very slow compared to oplder models), I think that was the .9s though not the .10s.

It's all very confusing, you get some places loving a HDD and others hating it. I suppose with something like a HDD, it's a one shot thing, if it dies once, it might just be faulty, or just poor reliability of the drives. So if someone has X drive and it dies, they wont buy it again and they wont recomend it to others :S.

Bah so I've got many options now, already got a caviar and I'm not disappointed, but not overly impressed.

So I've got the choice of 2x 250Gb P120s
a 500Mb Deskstar
a 500MB 7200.10

Just not sure what to go for, my WD is fine for sound, my PC has a little noise but I can sleep with it on (not on standby) next to my ear easily, I've also seen some benchmarks that don't rate the samsungs pretty high in most things but not with gaming applications, although, with a raptor as a system drive then theres no problem with that at all.

[whoatethepies]

The new WD Caviar 500GB are the quietest drives avaliable (source), and also perform fairly well. As a storage drive it looks like a fantastic choice as it also uses little power and produces low heat. Two 250GB drives would be cheaper though..

[-ChEM-]

have you run prime to test that overclock?

[Deviate]

I have one of the newer Seagates.. 200gb.. Runs brilliantly, can be quite loud though under load.