[Taristin]

That's what my HDD did yesterday. Just up and failed on me.  I'm currently using KNOPPIX so I don't have a giant paperweight on my desk, but...meh.

I'm looking to replace my dead 40Gb 7200rpm Maxtor HD with this one...

Good choice? I know the reviews are good, but I want advice from people who know about this stuff, rather than people who decide it's fun to write feedbacks...

[Nuke]

make sure your box supports serial ata. im still using eide drives myself. and my box doensnt even support them. really hard drives are all the same. they all do the same job.

[Taristin]

My MoBo is SATA ready... even has the cables and power plug adapters. I think it even has RAID built in, and with the little research I did on RAID, I've found it to be associated with SATA...

[MatthewPapa]

What exactly is RAID, my motherboard supports it too but I have always wondered what it is?

[Thorn]

It isn't.
Well, it is, but in the same way that regular old IDE is associated with RAID.

[Nuke]

you only need raid to set up fault tolerance, uless you have pricy data just a single drive should do. there are also ways to set up two drives in a manor that boosts drive performance via load balencing, but if ya loose either one you loose data.

[pyro-manic]

Looks good to me. 120Gb is a tidy size (I went for a 160Gb Maxtor), and SATA is fine. It makes installing XP a pain in the arse - you gotta have all the drivers on a floppy disk - but it works great.

I've never bothered with RAID - as Nuke said, it's not worth it unless you have critical data.

[MatthewPapa]

OK, thanks. I am thinking about getting one of those 10000 rpm sata drives is why i was asking. I just upgraded my mobo ( http://www.directron.com/a7n8xedeluxe.html ) and it has support for SATA.

[Sandwich]

Raa, you have the same MB as I do, no? The Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe?

EDIT: Whoops, seems that MathewPapa has it too.

[Gank]

As do I.

[Vertigo1]

Just so you know, you MIGHT be able to "fix" your 40 gigger by low-level formatting it.  I just wouldn't trust it for anything you couldn't afford to loose. (My 45GB IBM did that, and ever since I low-levelled it its been running like a champ!)  At any rate, don't fool with RAID unless you plan on buying two of those drives.  (RAID stands for Redundant Array of Independent Disks if I remember correctly...)  Even so, its only good if you want to have a quick means of backing up your data (Mirroring) or just want to make your computer think that two drives are one really large drive.  Here's the kicker though....they must be the exact same size, otherwise you're limited to the smallest size of the two.

more info

Now, as for the hard drive, personally I wouldn't waste money on SATA because you're limited to only one hard drive.  The only benefit is the thinner cable, but thats negated by round ribbon cables.  Theres no way you'll hit 150MB/sec with current drives so why pay more?  The fastest drive I've seen hit just over 70MB/sec on READ speeds.  Write....about 45 - 50MB/sec, and this is an IBM drive (one of the first of the fluid bearing drives).  My 160GB Maxtor (both drives are 7200RPM models) gets about the same R/W speeds.

[Styxx]

Originally posted by Sandwich
Raa, you have the same MB as I do, no? The Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe?

EDIT: Whoops, seems that MathewPapa has it too.

Popular, ain't it?

Me and my brother have it too.

[Thorn]

If you're doing RAID5 its actually quite a bit faster and fault tolerant at the same time.
Only problem is you need a minimum of 3 drives or something like that.

[Nuke]

there are sum uber raid arrays out there with like 32 drives, the thing can loose 7 of them without loosing data.

[Taristin]

Originally posted by Vertigo1
Just so you know, you MIGHT be able to "fix" your 40 gigger by low-level formatting it.  I just wouldn't trust it for anything you couldn't afford to loose. (My 45GB IBM did that, and ever since I low-levelled it its been running like a champ!)  At any rate, don't fool with RAID unless you plan on buying two of those drives.  (RAID stands for Redundant Array of Independent Disks if I remember correctly...)  Even so, its only good if you want to have a quick means of backing up your data (Mirroring) or just want to make your computer think that two drives are one really large drive.  Here's the kicker though....they must be the exact same size, otherwise you're limited to the smallest size of the two.

Well, how would I go about doing a low level format when the BIOS is reporting the disk has failed? I think I'm a little passed (past?) that point now... unfortunately.  I can replace all of the data on it, but I don't see how I'll be able to even initialize the format...

And you're saying SATA is a waste of money right now? I was leaning towards it because it's the newer system, but if the old one will suffice for years to come, I'll look for an IDE drive.

[Thorn]

Try downloading the manufacturers utilities, slap em on a boot disk, and fire it up.

[Taristin]

A Better Choice?

[Clave]

I added a 120GB Maxtor to the 160GB in my G5, it took about a minute to install, SATA is sweet!

Now I have to find an external drive to back up both internal drives...

[Thorn]

Originally posted by Raa
A Better Choice?

Buffer sucks.
This one is better. Same one I have.

[Turnsky]

Originally posted by Sandwich
Raa, you have the same MB as I do, no? The Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe?

EDIT: Whoops, seems that MathewPapa has it too.

y'know, i have one still sitting in its box, awaiting the CPU and ram i just ordered...

but, theoretically speaking, with that board, i could have 4 HD's in this case o' mine (if i could afford to buy the extra two, that is)

haven't heard any complaints about seagate or western digital recently...  look into those.