I'm considering buying an addition internal SATA HD for my Dell PC. I'm probably going to get it from New Egg. Does the data cable that connects the HD to the motherboard come with the hard drive? If not, where can I get it?

I think I want 1TB. Any recommendations on brand?

It depends if the packaging of the hard drive you're looking to buy states it it OEM or retail package. If it says OEM than no cables are included and will arrive usually in a antistatic bag. You can get the cables that you need there at newegg or on ebay. By the way, newegg is a great place to buy your computer parts.

I'm considering buying an addition internal SATA HD for my Dell PC. I'm probably going to get it from New Egg. Does the data cable that connects the HD to the motherboard come with the hard drive? If not, where can I get it?

I think I want 1TB. Any recommendations on brand?

Seagate 1TB drives are very good performers.

For any type of cables, go to Bestlink Netware (http://www.bestlinknetware.com/index.asp)

Definately a Seagate. Also, why did you settle on internal? Externals are a hell of a lot easier to maintain, especially on large capacity drives.

Definately a Seagate. Also, why did you settle on internal? Externals are a hell of a lot easier to maintain, especially on large capacity drives.

I already have an external drive. It's connected via firewire. It seems to take along time to spin up whenever I access it. And whenever I reboot my computer I have to turn the HD off and back on to reestablish connectivity. I partitioned the drive for two difference purposes. I would like to have a dedicated drive for each purpose. I record music and some videos and that stuff tends to take up a lot of space. I figured an internal would be more efficient.

Gotcha.

Might as well go for the 1.5tb...

Newegg.com - Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST31500341AS 1.5TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive (bare drive) - Internal Hard Drives (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148337)

Seagate | 1.5TB Barracuda SATA Hard Drive | ST315005N1A1AS-RK (http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/592354-REG/Seagate_ST315005N1A1AS_RK_1_5TB_Barracuda_SATA_Hard.html)

Seagate - Barracuda 1.5TB Internal Serial ATA Hard Drive for Desktops - ST315005N1A (http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=9172771&st=seagate+1.5tb&lp=1&type=product&cp=1&id=1218044029169)

You can get external sata connectors now.
Newegg.com - SYBA SD-LP-SIL2ES PCI SATA RAID Card - Controllers / RAID Cards (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816124021)

Might as well go for the 1.5tb...

Newegg.com - Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST31500341AS 1.5TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive (bare drive) - Internal Hard Drives (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148337)

Seagate | 1.5TB Barracuda SATA Hard Drive | ST315005N1A1AS-RK (http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/592354-REG/Seagate_ST315005N1A1AS_RK_1_5TB_Barracuda_SATA_Hard.html)

Seagate - Barracuda 1.5TB Internal Serial ATA Hard Drive for Desktops - ST315005N1A (http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=9172771&st=seagate+1.5tb&lp=1&type=product&cp=1&id=1218044029169)

I think 1TB is plenty. I'm thinking about this one:

Newegg.com - Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST31000333AS 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - Internal Hard Drives (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148373)

I read somewhere that I may have to upgrade my power supply when installing another HD. How do you determine this? I have a Dell XPS-400.

Externals are a hell of a lot easier to maintain, especially on large capacity drives.

:confused: what maintence?
Do you wash and wax it every couple of months?

:confused: what maintence?
Do you wash and wax it every couple of months?

Uh.. no. They're easier to install and when you clean the inside of your computer out, it's less stuff cluttering it up and for dust to get on.

Might as well go for the 1.5tb...



be careful, Seagate is still wiping the egg of their face over the firmware issues with the 1.5Tb drives

Speaking of large drives.....
I have been buying LaCie drives for a long time, and have had very good luck with them. I had a USB connector fail on an out-of-warranty drive, so I opened it up to attempt a repair. Turns out that the D2 and similar series LaCie - LaCie d2 Quadra Hard Disk (http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?pid=11156) use 2 drives, not one. A 500GB USB drive uses 2 250GB IDE drives. They are both wired to a small USB to IDE converter board which must also do some level of RAID to join the drives. The 1TB drive uses 2 500GB drives.

Thought that was rather interesting.

Speaking of large drives.....
I have been buying LaCie drives for a long time, and have had very good luck with them. I had a USB connector fail on an out-of-warranty drive, so I opened it up to attempt a repair. Turns out that the D2 and similar series LaCie - LaCie d2 Quadra Hard Disk (http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?pid=11156) use 2 drives, not one. A 500GB USB drive uses 2 250GB IDE drives. They are both wired to a small USB to IDE converter board which must also do some level of RAID to join the drives. The 1TB drive uses 2 500GB drives.

Thought that was rather interesting.

Is there some advantage to this operationally or do you think it's just a money saving thing? I can't imagine it saves money because it require more hardware and software to run it. So what would be the advantage to it? I can see if you bought it for the purpose of redundancy running RAID 1, 3, or 5, but it sounds like you didn't know this was the configuration and it was probably running, by default, RAID 0 since it showed up as a single drive. That would mean that if one of the drives failed you lose everything. Maybe I better check my external drive to see if it’s set up this way. Although the chassis is too thin I think.

Is there some advantage to this operationally or do you think it's just a money saving thing? I can't imagine it saves money because it require more hardware and software to run it. So what would be the advantage to it? I can see if you bought it for the purpose of redundancy running RAID 1, 3, or 5, but it sounds like you didn't know this was the configuration and it was probably running, by default, RAID 0 since it showed up as a single drive. That would mean that if one of the drives failed you lose everything. Maybe I better check my external drive to see if it’s set up this way. Although the chassis is too thin I think.

The advantage is speed. Higher transfer rates, higher burst rates. LaCie's origin was with Macintosh high-end machines, so they made disk drives capable of staying up with the Mac graphic processors.

This is good for me too, I keep all my DVD movies in digital form on hard drives for playback. The better the performance of the drive, the less chance of video hesitation issues.

Prices are comparable to other vendors, and I haven't had one fail yet.

The advantage is speed. Higher transfer rates, higher burst rates. LaCie's origin was with Macintosh high-end machines, so they made disk drives capable of staying up with the Mac graphic processors.

This is good for me too, I keep all my DVD movies in digital form on hard drives for playback. The better the performance of the drive, the less chance of video hesitation issues.

Prices are comparable to other vendors, and I haven't had one fail yet.

They seem to be quite pricey compared to others, but I guess you get what you pay for. I'm still leaning toward internal though.

Definately a Seagate. Also, why did you settle on internal? Externals are a hell of a lot easier to maintain, especially on large capacity drives.

I'm reading reviews on the Seagates and none of them are getting very favorable reviews. The Western Digitals seem to be pretty reliable. Anyone???

The main reason I'm going internal is because I have a SATA slot open and I think I will get better speeds vice USB or firewire. I'm also using firewire for other things that would require me to toggle between firewire connections. I have an external audio interface I use for my recording equipment. Whenever I have want to dump a video from my cam via firewire I have to disable my audio interface. I also have another external HD I am using via firewire, so I am maxed out.

I'm reading reviews on the Seagates and none of them are getting very favorable reviews. The Western Digitals seem to be pretty reliable. Anyone???

The main reason I'm going internal is because I have a SATA slot open and I think I will get better speeds vice USB or firewire. I'm also using firewire for other things that would require me to toggle between firewire connections. I have an external audio interface I use for my recording equipment. Whenever I have want to dump a video from my cam via firewire I have to disable my audio interface. I also have another external HD I am using via firewire, so I am maxed out.

Not trying to change your ideas, but if you don't have a SATA slot on the back of the case, you can get a short adapter cable that will connect to the SATA port and give you an eSATA jack on the outside. That way you can still have the flexibility of an external and the performance of a SATA drive.

Something like this:
External SATA / eSATA Adapter (http://www.computervideogear.com/sata/external-sata-esata-adapter.htm)

Or you could do this like I did:
Cyberguys.com - Vantec UGT-ST300 eSATA PCI Card 1 Internal SATA 1 External eSATA (http://www.cyberguys.com/product-details/?productid=12601)

Nothing wrong with Western Digitals, but just over my time frame of using computers, Seagate has been the most reliable, for both external and internal. Granted, I haven't had any large capacity drives (nothing bigger than 500gb).

I think 1TB is plenty. I'm thinking about this one:

Newegg.com - Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST31000333AS 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - Internal Hard Drives (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148373)

I read somewhere that I may have to upgrade my power supply when installing another HD. How do you determine this? I have a Dell XPS-400.

I bought the predecessor to this one. Newegg.com - Seagate Barracuda ES.2 ST31000340NS 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - Internal Hard Drives (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148278) Mine is the AS not the NS.

It costs more, is newer, has much better user ratings than the one you are thinking about. I have not had any problems with mine. It also has a 5 year warranty instead of 3 like the one you are considering.

Not trying to change your ideas, but if you don't have a SATA slot on the back of the case, you can get a short adapter cable that will connect to the SATA port and give you an eSATA jack on the outside. That way you can still have the flexibility of an external and the performance of a SATA drive.

Something like this:
External SATA / eSATA Adapter (http://www.computervideogear.com/sata/external-sata-esata-adapter.htm)

Or you could do this like I did:
Cyberguys.com - Vantec UGT-ST300 eSATA PCI Card 1 Internal SATA 1 External eSATA (http://www.cyberguys.com/product-details/?productid=12601)

With eSATA ,you need an eSATA cable; it has better EMI shielding.

Your probably going to get the same results as if you ask Nvidia vs ATI, its going to come to Brand Preference.

:yeahthat:

Your probably going to get the same results as if you ask Nvidia vs ATI, its going to come to Brand Preference. Seagate recently caugh flack for their FirmWare problems (someone already commented) but Western Digital hasnt always had a stellar track record either.



Yeah I think all Manufacturers have had bad runs over the yrs

IBM Deathstar aka deskstar

Deskstar failures (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Deskstar)

The IBM Deskstar 75GXP, and several other models made around the same time, became infamous for their reportedly high failure rates. This led to the drives being colloquially referred to as "Deathstars".

Lawsuit

Despite failures being reported within the manufacturer warranty period (3 years), Michael T. Granito, Jr., an American user of IBM's 75GXP hard drive, filed a class-action lawsuit against IBM on 2001-10-16 for defects in the product causing it to "crash".[1] Without admitting responsibility, IBM settled this lawsuit in 2005.[2]

[edit] Details

A firmware update (details) gives a clue to some of the issues:

* Possible data corruption due to a problem with S.M.A.R.T. background operations.
* Application of wear levelling to avoid the heads dwelling too long over the same area

The drives were also known for an unusually high rate of head crashes. The combination of two relatively new (at the time) technologies, GMR heads and glass platters may be largely to blame for the issues.

In addition to the failure that had led to the lawsuit, additional flaws were found in Deskstar 60GXP, 75GXP, 120GXP, 180GXP, which are caused by Giant Magneto Resistive read / write heads, and the easily corrupted NVRAM chip.[3]

Aftermath

Since the filing of lawsuit, IBM unveiled Deskstar 120GXP, Travelstar 60GH and 40GN in 2001-11-07.[1] The Deskstar documentation was updated to show the drives had been rated to 333 power-on hours per month (45 percent), leading to speculation that was the result of the lawsuit. However, IBM spokesperson replied that the rating is not new at the time.[2]

In June 2002, Hitachi and IBM reached a framework agreement under which Hitachi would purchase IBM's HDD operations. The deal was closed on 2002-03-31. On 2003-01-06, Hitachi announced the new hard disk drive storage company is named Hitachi Global Storage Technologies.[4] After finalising the sale of the storage division, IBM announced taking $2 billion charge in its second quarter.[5]


LaCie is a good name ... a friend spent the coin back in the 90's to buy a 30g SCSI External Drive of use on various MACs .... it lasted a very long time .. but then SCSI drives in that era were 1000% more reliable than PC Versions

but they do not make hard drives, only repackage someone else's


my last few drives have been WD 500, 750s' and my 1Tb is a Samsung ...

no issues ... I got an HP 500 GB external drive 2 yrs ago, but it quickly started to melt down, so I roll my own now and but extra fans on them to keep cool

I just ordered this one:

Newegg.com - Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST31000333AS 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - Internal Hard Drives (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148373)

I'll let you know how it goes.

I just ordered this one:

Newegg.com - Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST31000333AS 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - Internal Hard Drives (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148373)

I'll let you know how it goes.

New HD is working GREAT!

New HD is working GREAT!

:yay: Lots more room for all those important files..... :lol: