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Need a Hard Drive


astr0creep

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Since I can't edit my last post I'll have to double post here...

 

Tarna, what do you think about the new 1TB drives from Hitachi? Any plans to purchase one (or several) of those? :rolleyes:"

Don't know anything about Hitachi's drive record so I haven't bought any. The only Tb drives I've seen ( I really haven't been looking too hard though ) have been smaller drives RAIDed together to get a Tb. I have had a good run with Western Digital and Seagate has a good rep as well as a 5 year warranty. I figure if they have that much confidence in their drives, they're not planning on replacing too many.

 

Surrep...I haven't had any problems with my larger drives. Because of their size though, I will be adding secondary drives as redunancies. I had though about mirroring 750s to have automatic back-ups but a virus or any screw-up would corrupt both drives so I just make the copies by hand. Time consuming but safer.

Ruminations...

 

When a man has no Future, the Present passes too quickly to be assimilated and only the static Past has value.

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Since I can't edit my last post I'll have to double post here...

 

Tarna, what do you think about the new 1TB drives from Hitachi? Any plans to purchase one (or several) of those? :rolleyes:"

Don't know anything about Hitachi's drive record so I haven't bought any. The only Tb drives I've seen ( I really haven't been looking too hard though ) have been smaller drives RAIDed together to get a Tb. I have had a good run with Western Digital and Seagate has a good rep as well as a 5 year warranty. I figure if they have that much confidence in their drives, they're not planning on replacing too many.

 

Hitachi announced their new 1TB drives at CES last week. Link

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With the 1 TB milestone in mind, we can't help looking back at the history at hard drives. Hitachi reminded us that the first hard drive, released in 1956, stored 5 MB of data and was priced at $50,000 - or $10,000 per MB. 35 years later, in 1991, the industry had reached 1 GB and first mass-market gigabyte drives were entering the market around 1995 for about $500. Twelve years later, the industry has overcome serious concerns of how to keep increasing hard drive storage densities and is looking towards hard drives with multiple terabytes of storage capacity. Compared to a $10,000/MB price in 1956, a capacity of 1 GB is priced today at about 40 cents.

 

:D I remember seeing pictures of some of those drives. Monstrous! The platters were the size of 33 1/3 RPM vinyl records ( you kids wouldn't remember that :rolleyes: ) and were coated with a metal ceramic mixture.

 

Back in the 80s when I was a programmer, you couldn't kill for enough memory. Now it's almost free. :joy: Probably why I hoard as much as I do. My computer has way more space than the entire county network I used to use ( my college too! ). I used to lock up the college system by placing too high of a demand on it's resources to make artwork for my apartment. Since it was also time-shared out to the accounting depts of some oil companies, the school got a little pissy about this.

 

One of the few benefits of being an old geezer...you have the benefit of perspective.

Ruminations...

 

When a man has no Future, the Present passes too quickly to be assimilated and only the static Past has value.

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Since it was also time-shared out to the accounting depts of some oil companies, the school got a little pissy about this.

 

They got a little pissy about it? Gee, I don't see why. :-"

 

Right now I'm feeling a bit of a squeeze with my 160GB drive. My next computer is definitely going to have a "tarna" level storage space. :rolleyes:

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Right now I'm feeling a bit of a squeeze with my 160GB drive. My next computer is definitely going to have a "tarna" level storage space. :rolleyes:

:D You can never have too much HD space. I built my wife a gaming computer last year for Yule ( Christmas ) with a 100 Gb drive. I loaded 40 Gb worth of games right from the start and it hasn't gotten any better. It was a SATA1 drive so that helped with loading/starting the software but I have the feeling I'll be upgrading her system soon. :- She plays casino games so her system doesn't take up the same resources that a 'real' gaming rig would but she still needs HD space.

 

Check your motherboard's BIOS abilities and get at least a 500 Gb ( check on ebay ). You won't be disappointed. Any secondary drives will be controlled by WinXP ( or Vista ) so you don't need to worry about it's size.

Ruminations...

 

When a man has no Future, the Present passes too quickly to be assimilated and only the static Past has value.

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I just want to add that I (now) exclusively buy Hitachi drives for my computer. I used to have Seagate (slow and noisy with a weird hacking sound everytime it did a search), a Western Digital (slow and hot) and a Maxtor (which broke down, the bastard!). I also had an old IBM Deskstar disk that broke down. It was the model with the glass platters. When IBM's hard drive manufacturing was bought by Hitachi, they were improved a great deal.

 

I've been thinking about buying a Seagate though, mainly because of their excellent guarantees.

 

The Raptor.. It's like buying a drive for the price of SCSI but only getting half the performance. And only 150GB, no SATA2 interface and the sound?! Kills the deal for me.

Swedes, go to: Spel2, for the latest game reviews in swedish!

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It is a good feeling not to care about how much stuff I put on my computer.

No more space management!  (w00t)

Don't worry, soon you'll wonder where all those 233Gb gone. ;)

Gods! Ain't that the truth! When I added my first drive ( a whopping 60 Gb! ), I figured I would be set for life :lol: . Idiot! That only started the trend of saving anything and everything. That drive filled up so I added a PCI expander card and a 120 Gb drive. Upgraded to WinXP. Then a 250 Gb. Lost a 60 Gb folder. G**D**mit! Almost put match to fuse to the Presario over that one ( still looking forward to it! Soon. Very soon. :( ). Bought data recovery software, recovered folder and bought another 250 to back up the first. This is stupid so I bought a 320. Built a new rig with two motherboards so that the first could act as an archive and drive controller. Then a second 320. Then a third when I caught them on sale. Damn cables! Bought a USB hub and IDE to USB adapters. This computer is a freeking mess. Bought a 500 Gb SATA and started consolidating and indexing so I can find this crap. Now a 750 Gb SATA and even more consolidating ( will index drive some day maybe ). Now I need another 500 and 750 to back up the data on the two large drives in case they crash ;) . Moron! :D

 

The stupidity never ends. ;)

 

Carefull Bok. We're not supposed to be admitting these little weaknesses. :lol:

Ruminations...

 

When a man has no Future, the Present passes too quickly to be assimilated and only the static Past has value.

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It's a lost cause, like fighting dust on your monitor...

 

When I got a floppy drive for my C64, I thought I could have all the programs in the world on one floppy (later on a doublesided floppy when I found out to hack the disks with a small scissor)...

 

When I got an Amiga, I thought I could have all the software in the world on those humongous 1.7Mb floppy disks...

 

When I got a 100mb hd for my Amiga I thought I could have all the software for not only the amiga, but for my pc and c64 emulator in the world on my hd...

 

When I got a pc with a 200mb hd, I thought I could at least have Windows and a few programs...

 

When I got a pc with 300gb I thought I could have all the software I would ever need on it...

 

My current WIP, I intend to equip with 4x500gb drives, it might just be able to squeeze Windows Vista in there... meh, nevermind.

 

Morale is, will I ever learn? :(

 

You can never have too much disk space.

“He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice.” - Albert Einstein

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I've had a bit off oddness that I'm assuming is the hardrive of late. I have an 80 gb. SATA drive that's about 6 years old. It came in a Compaq boutique type PC, but I transferred it into my new rig. a few years back when I built it. I reformatted the drive back then as well.

 

Lately it's making a clicking noise and slowing down tremendously. It's not very common, and it doesn't seem to have a specific pattern. I've recently defragmented the hard drive, and I ran chkdsk last night. It didn't seem to come up with any errors. But last night when it locked up, I restarted it and then it kept asking for a boot disk. I had to power down completely to get the OS back up.

 

Anyways, I don't have a problem buying a new one, but I want to make sure that I'm diagnosing the problem correctly. I'm also not looking forward to installing my old copy of XP and having to go through the whole SP installation hassle. Is there an easier way to do that, like making a CD with SP2 on it or something?

 

Oh yeah, ever since I flashed my BIOS a year ago, my computer won't enter hibernation mode. I get some compliance error. I assumed that was a motherboard issue, but I wonder if it's a hard drive issue as well.

Edited by Hurlshot
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Ouch! Sounds like the drive bearing is going out. If that's the case, it'll only get worse. One way of diagnosing if it is truely bearing drag would be to read the current draw on the yellow wire of your power plug for the hard-drive. That is the 12 volt supply that spins the drive motor. You should be able to get a very cheap ammeter from Radio Shack or a car parts store ( about $20 USD ). Make sure it will read DC current! Compare what your meter shows to what the drive is rated at @12 volts. My Seagate drive is rated 0.34 amperes @ 12 VDC. Your drive should have it's voltage/amperage ( or current ) ratings printed on the label with the model/serial numbers. If your meter will not read a value less than 1 reliably, coil the yellow wire a few times and read it again. Each additional wire being read will add that same value. It's called a 'multiplier coil' BTW. 3 wraps = 3X actual current. 7 wraps = 7X actual...you get the drill. Take your reading and divide it by the number of wraps and that will give you your actual current draw. Sometimes you have to do this to get a usable reading if your meter will not read discrete signals.

 

Anyway, the jist of this is that if your drive is reading at or above the rated current for the 12 volts section, your drive motor is on it's way out. Transfer the info ASAP.

 

Does it do it at startup or only after it has been running a while and has had a chance to heat up?

 

If it's heating up and causing the motor drag then I have another suggestion. The drive is still toast but I have a way for you to get the info off the drive before it completely locks up on you.

 

Would it be a problem to plug in my new hard drive with the old one, and transfer all the files from one to the other? Will that mess up XP in any way?

I don't think you can transfer Windows or any other application from drive to drive like that. Maybe someone here knows something about drive cloning. I think drive cloning has to be done on a seperate computer though with the 'source' drive and the 'receiving' drive plugged into it. Never done it myself though so I'm just talking out my ass here. :shifty:

Ruminations...

 

When a man has no Future, the Present passes too quickly to be assimilated and only the static Past has value.

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I went and bought a new drive for security, and I plugged it in. It actually came with software that allowed me to transfer all the information off the old drive onto the new drive and designate it as the master. Once the info was copied, I changed the boot order in my BIOS and formatted the old drive. Now I have a backup drive that's a bit unreliable, but I can always pull it out if need be.

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I went and bought a new drive for security, and I plugged it in.  It actually came with software that allowed me to transfer all the information off the old drive onto the new drive and designate it as the master.  Once the info was copied, I changed the boot order in my BIOS and formatted the old drive.  Now I have a backup drive that's a bit unreliable, but I can always pull it out if need be.

 

What drive is this?

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It was a Western Digital 160 gb. SATA drive. My old one was a Western Digital 80 gb., but it wasn't SATA - or at least it wasn't connected to the SATA ports on my motherboard. That's probably because I didn't hook it up correctly way back when I built the computer. It seems to have made quite a performance difference.

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I went and bought a new drive for security, and I plugged it in.  It actually came with software that allowed me to transfer all the information off the old drive onto the new drive and designate it as the master.  Once the info was copied, I changed the boot order in my BIOS and formatted the old drive.  Now I have a backup drive that's a bit unreliable, but I can always pull it out if need be.

I forgot about that. Western Digital comes with "Data Lifeguard Tools". I'd used it to wipe drives ( writes zeros to all sectors ) but had not used any of the other features.

 

Did you make the boot disc to transfer the drives or were you able to do in Windows?

 

I wonder if it will work with other brands of drives...

Ruminations...

 

When a man has no Future, the Present passes too quickly to be assimilated and only the static Past has value.

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