Author Topic: Hard Drive upgrade (Read 537 times)

Modas · « **on:** December 11, 2007, 12:15:57 PM »

Hi Gents -

Well, I never thought I could do it, but I've filled up my two HDs in my computer. A 60 Gb master and a 20 Gb slave. Being the lazy SOB that I am, I'm looking for the easiest way out.

Both drives, although a little older are working ok with no signs of distress so I hate to scrap one of the drives to make room for another. I had two IDE slots, one slot has two harddrives and the other has two optical drives (although the slave has crapped out).

Can I run an Optical drive and a harddrive off the same IDE cable, assuming one was the master and the other the slave? This would be my ideal situation, as I could keep my two existing drives as is, and get rid of the junked optical to free up a spot for my new drive.

What about running a SATA HD with IDE's? I have four SATA slots that I could use as well, but I'm not familiar with the SATA drives so I dont' know if I could keep the IDE as the master have the other IDE and the new SATA as the slaves. I don't want to have to format and reinstall everything onto a new drive. The advantage of the SATA drives is I can get a 250 or 300 GB drive vs only a 160 GB drive in the IDE.

Any other options? Any help is greatly appreciated!!

Easyscor · « **Reply #1 on:** December 11, 2007, 01:38:30 PM »

On my ABIT motherboard I can run both ATA and SATA at the same time, check your BIOS to make sure you enable it.

Make the SATA drive your OS main drive and partition it similar to your current setup. That SATA drive will be much faster then your ATA drives, and improve your game performance as well, with less texture/skin induced stutter.

Fulmar · « **Reply #2 on:** December 11, 2007, 02:10:26 PM »

A new SATA drive isn't going to give you a whole lot of performance increase, unless your older drivers were 5400 RPMs and the new one is 7200 RPMs. There you might see some difference.

Transfer rates aren't going to be a lot better. You may load textures a little faster, but thats mute. FPS will probably stay the same.

Modas · « **Reply #3 on:** December 11, 2007, 02:49:45 PM »

I'm not overly worried about speed. I don't have any issues with my current setup, other than space. I'm looking for the easiest addition of a harddrive, preferably being able to keep the other two in service and preferably not reinstalling windows xp on a new drive. Not that its hard, I just don't want to have to deal with all the other installs that go with it.

Yep, I'm lazy

Fulmar · « **Reply #4 on:** December 11, 2007, 02:55:31 PM »

Btw, does your power supply have SATA power connectors? If not, they make molex to SATA power converters, will ave you the hassled of buying a new power supply.

TequilaChaser · « **Reply #5 on:** December 11, 2007, 03:43:27 PM »

Modas,
just get you one of these,
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136025

partition it to say 2 or 3 or 4 different partitions back up each existing Harddrive how ever you like and clean up the C:\ drive or OS operating drive you're using now for better performance.......

and from here on out use this new external drive for Hd back up ( frequently ) and storage for other stuff

Fulmar · « **Reply #6 on:** December 11, 2007, 05:40:43 PM »

External HD's are another option, but for use as backups only or storing data on it. Don't install software on them.

Modas · « **Reply #7 on:** December 12, 2007, 07:43:42 AM »

Hey Guys -

I never considered an external drive. But 50 Gb would definitely solve my storage problem. I'm assuming I can't put software on it due to transfers rate?

Thanks!!

Ghosth · « **Reply #8 on:** December 12, 2007, 07:45:28 AM »

Any good Dvd Burner will burn 4 gig's of data onto a disk in under 8 minutes.

Think about it, rather than plug your HD's up with all that stuff, burn it to disc, label it, case it and its yours for a LONG LONG TIME! An hours worth of time spent cleaning up and burning to disc would completely empty that 20 gig hd.

Good high end DVD drives are 31-33$ Personally I like Liteon.

Or yes you could go with an external SATA drive, etc. Pay 3 - 5 times as much as a good DVD drive and stack of blanks.

Fulmar · « **Reply #9 on:** December 12, 2007, 09:43:48 AM »

Quote

Originally posted by Modas
I'm assuming I can't put software on it due to transfers rate?

Correct.

As for Ghosth's DVD recommendation, you have pro and cons to that as well. and External drive will be more handy and you won't have to dig through a dozen disks to find that one file you're looking for. However, like any HD, they are the possibilites of the HD crashing.

Personally, what I do is I have both. If I have project work, important files, photos, videos etc that I want to keep as long as possible, I have 3 copies. 1 on my External HD for easy access, and I burn 2 backup disks on DVD. But this may be way beyond your needs so take it for what its worth. I've nearly lost a lot of important stuff over the years, so I'm anal with my backup.

Krusty · « **Reply #10 on:** December 12, 2007, 09:51:41 AM »

Quote

Originally posted by Fulmar
A new SATA drive isn't going to give you a whole lot of performance increase, unless your older drivers were 5400 RPMs and the new one is 7200 RPMs. There you might see some difference.

Transfer rates aren't going to be a lot better. You may load textures a little faster, but thats mute. FPS will probably stay the same.

Nope! Not so. Sorry to say I've got first-hand experience with this. I went from a 7200 RPM ATA to a 7200 RPM SATA and my GOD the difference is so amazing I'll never go back. Mind you I changed nothing on the system *but* the hard drive, and everything is faster. I eventually had to reinstall Windows XP and the install took 5 minutes or so of copy time, whereas it would take over 30+ on previous attempts.

I cannot stress this enough, SATA rules!

Just be sure to make the SATA your primary, so that windows and applications run from it (speeding them up)

EDIT: Just to clarify, it's an internal SATA, not external or anything.

Easyscor · « **Reply #11 on:** December 12, 2007, 01:25:29 PM »

Most people don't understand how file intensive AH2 is and think just because you 'preload' textures everything will be golden. Their loss.

Fulmar · « **Reply #12 on:** December 12, 2007, 01:53:34 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by Krusty
Nope! Not so. Sorry to say I've got first-hand experience with this. I went from a 7200 RPM ATA to a 7200 RPM SATA and my GOD the difference is so amazing I'll never go back. Mind you I changed nothing on the system *but* the hard drive, and everything is faster. I eventually had to reinstall Windows XP and the install took 5 minutes or so of copy time, whereas it would take over 30+ on previous attempts.

EDIT: Just to clarify, it's an internal SATA, not external or anything.

I can only imagine your old ATA drive has poor access timings, a small cache and what not. I've transitioned the same way before. I never noticed a difference in my old motherboard when I switched from ATA100 to a SATA I drive, 7200 RPMs and a 8.5ms access time for both. Diffferent capacities.

The only time I've ever experienced a dramatic increase in drive performance was from going from SATA II to RAID 0 setup.

TequilaChaser · « **Reply #13 on:** December 12, 2007, 05:58:33 PM »

honestly, it is all in how you keep your Hard Drive clean, registery clean and limit the amount of stored data / files / films / movies / etc add infinium.......

as for an external HD....if you wanted to, you could load software on it, you could make it a seperate bootable HD with different OS ( if the HD is a firewire or a eSATA drive type....USB I think would be a tad slow response/access timewise )

as for differences in speeds.them raptor 10,000 rpm drives ROCK...the fujitsu 15,000 rpm drive ROCKS as well......just cost more.....

I use currently (2) hitachi SATA 160 gig drives in RAID 1 setup..and don't see any performance hit even though my delapidated athlon XP2800 ( at stock clock ) and 1 gig ram is good a worn out..... Antec TP-II PSU and ATI X800 series 256 meg vid AGP is making /writing everything twice at the same time.......1280x1024 screenres 1024 textures, and most times maxed out on detail sliders and stay steady 70 FPS...unless scenarios or FSO at times.I dip in 50s or so.but if I lower sliders I am right back to max refresh of 70......

sorry got off track a wee bit.......

so if you want to game..just load up OS< minimal extras, good clean registry, ( I set my page file to 4,000 ) instead of letting windows manage it for me......

and the smaller HD the better 20 gig is good....80 gig is pushing it...... a raptor 36 gig or 74 gig is ideal.... make a dual boot system or load up winXP and AcesHigh2 and the needed Aces High textures/plane cache/terrains.and nothing more.....

then have other HD for all other PC use......

just my view of it, everyone has their own opinions/views...........figured I give mine.......

just be sure to backup your data/important files often, and keep your PC clean, registry clean, defragged and you will be fine........

Tigger29 · « **Reply #14 on:** December 12, 2007, 08:02:32 PM »

I 100% agree with Krusty!

When I built this system in April, the first thing I noticed was how amazingly fast my XP install went! This was my first experience with SATA, but I figured it was more so the Core-Duo more than anything else. Boy was I wrong!

My SATA drive went sour 4 months later.. luckily it didn't crash, just got very, very slow. I was able to Ghost it back to my old IDE drive so I could use that until I got my drive back from WD.

First thing I noticed was that on average it took 3-4 times longer to load windows, and AH would stutter from time to time (disabling skins fixed that). General computer performance dropped very noticeably, especially anytime the drive had to be accessed.

I figured that might have been a "byproduct" of the ghost process, but when I got my new drive back in the mail a couple weeks later, I again ghosted it from the IDE to the SATS drive, and things were just like before! No pausing or stuttering... just fast!

Keep in mind these are both 7200 RPM drives.. 60GB IDE vs 160GB SATA.