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Which hard drive can I use in my PC?

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Which hard drive can I use in my PC?

Chas Uno

Chas Uno

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Another PC tech question (sorry!)

My PC - Packard Bell Pentium III 700mhz, 512mb ram, Windows 2000 Professional SP4. Hard drive is 17GB.

I need to upgrade my hard drive as the 17GB it has at the moment is almost full. I was always under the belief that it was an IDE interface? A lot of drives say 'SATA' or 'PATA'. With me being a bit behind in computer technology I've no idea what I am looking for now...

I've looked on www.DABS.com and there are some reasonably priced drives, BUT, which ones will work with my machine?

I like this one, 160GB!!!! (Remember the biggest hard drive I ever had was 20gb :eek: )

http://www.dabs.com/productview.asp...vigationKey=11154,50410,47240000&v=2#infoarea

Will it be ok for my system, or does a PIII motherboard only work with certain types? Is there a maximum size a PIII can work with? What do I need to know about my machine to be able to decide which hard disk drives will work with it?

Sorry for all the questions, just trying to get my PC up speed for my University course!
 
http://www.dabs.com/productview.asp...vigationKey=11154,50410,47240000&v=2#infoarea should work fine with your PC as it has an IDE interface, however as already said you will need to check that your PC can support hard drives as big as 160GB, some older computers will only see something like 80GB out of the total 160GB.

If this does happen you can check Packard Bell's website and see if there is a BIOS update for your motherboard that fixes it.
 
I'm still a little confused over what hard drive I should get (sorry for being a computer noob :eek: ), so here are the specs of my motherboard:

http://www.active-hardware.com/english/reviews/mainboard/ga-6wmm7.htm

I guess bigger is better as most likely I'll get a newer/ faster PC at some point in the near (ish) future and would also like to use this new hard drive as a back up in the newer machine.

80gb should be fine for me (some are very cheap!), though 120 or 160gb would be ok as well if I can pick one up cheap enough.

But with my motherboard specs, what is the largest drive it will recognise? And would it just drop in or would I need to use 'Fdisk' and run installation programs/ drivers?

Seriously running out of space now so need to get one pronto! :eek:

Oh and Trans, I'm definitely on the hunt for a Seagate as they've often been recommended to me for reliability, speed and quietness. (y)

Edit: How do I overclock the processor?
 
Last edited:
Don't think there'd an upper limit on HDD capacity for your mobo Chas. Once formatted, you should be able to use it straight away, and should be OK running as ATA-66 :)
 
chaos said:
Don't think there'd an upper limit on HDD capacity for your mobo Chas. Once formatted, you should be able to use it straight away, and should be OK running as ATA-66 :)
Click to expand...

Thanks Chaos!

Will this one be ok?

http://www.dabs.com/ProductView.asp...0410,47240000,45540000&InMerch=1&v=2#infoarea

8mb buffer and 7200 spin speed should make it a nice fast accessing drive? And does 'PATA' mean it will hook up to my current HD cable (IDE interface???)

If it's suitable I'll be purchasing it in the next day or so!

Please confirm so I can go ahead and order it (y)
 
1986Uno45S said:
Thanks Chaos!

Will this one be ok?

http://www.dabs.com/ProductView.asp...0410,47240000,45540000&InMerch=1&v=2#infoarea

8mb buffer and 7200 spin speed should make it a nice fast accessing drive? And does 'PATA' mean it will hook up to my current HD cable (IDE interface???)

If it's suitable I'll be purchasing it in the next day or so!

Please confirm so I can go ahead and order it (y)
Click to expand...

Yeah, it should work fine :) The only thing I will say is that when you upgrade your PC, you can get faster than ATA-100 ;)
 
chaos said:
Yeah, it should work fine :) The only thing I will say is that when you upgrade your PC, you can get faster than ATA-100 ;)
Click to expand...

Cheers Chaos!

Noob question again - what is ATA-100? :confused: :eek:

Does this mean the hard drive I'm about buy won't work in a more modern machine? Is ATA-100 the fastest that my current MB will cope with?

Damn I'm so behind on computer technology. I used to work as a PC technician many years ago too when the 486 was king :cry:
 
1986Uno45S said:
Cheers Chaos!

Noob question again - what is ATA-100? :confused: :eek:

Does this mean the hard drive I'm about buy won't work in a more modern machine? Is ATA-100 the fastest that my current MB will cope with?

Damn I'm so behind on computer technology. I used to work as a PC technician many years ago too when the 486 was king :cry:
Click to expand...

That HDD you linked to has a speed of 100MHz and is an ATA (or IDE) interface, hence ATA-100.

The fastest your mobo will do is 66MHz - the HDD should run at 66MHz perfectly well. It's exactly the same principle as having a DDR400 memory stick in a mobo that only supports a slower speed - the memory stick would run at the highest speed the mobo will allow.

It's when you upgrade is where that HDD may be relatively slow - the chances are the new PC would support ATA-150, so you could be missing out on a bit of speed.
 
chaos said:
It's when you upgrade is where that HDD may be relatively slow - the chances are the new PC would support ATA-150, so you could be missing out on a bit of speed.
Click to expand...

Hmmmm ATA150 is SERIAL ATA-150 which is a completely different interface to Parallel ATA 33/66/100.

Your current PIII will have two PATA/IDE headers on the motherboard. Each can support two devices (master and slave). I'd guess that your HDD is channel 0 master and your CD-ROM (or whatever) is master channel 1.

If you swap a new PATA drive for your current 17Gb unit then stick in your Windows XP restore disk it will take you through a fresh install of windows (should take an hour or two).

When that is done and your happy with your new drive swap your CD-ROM for your old HDD. When you computer boots up it should boot to the new drive but see the old one as a secondary drive (say d:).

You can then pull off whatever info you want from your old drive and stick it on the new one.

When finished replace the CD.

You could set the old drive up as a secondary (slave) drive but I wouldn't bother as it will lead to confusion if you're not up on such things.

You could then buy an external USB 3.5" HDD caddy which you old frive could sit in and act as an external storage transfer device (useful if you want to share files with work/friends).

If/when you buy a new PC you will undoubtedly find that it has a Serial ATA HDD and some Serial ATA headers on the motherboard. It's quite likely that it will only have ONE Parallel ATA/IDE header on the motherboard. Again you could connect your 160 Gb (of whatever you've just bought) IDE drive to this but perhaps easier would be to swap that drive into the aforementioned USB HDD caddy and just bin the 20Gb drive.

NB in an ideal world you'd blank the disk in the USB HDD caddy to get rid of the O/S. Sometimes motherboards like to boot from USB devices if they have operating systems on them!

Have fun!
 
Cheers for all the advice everyone (y)

I've ordered this one:

http://www.dabs.com/ProductView.asp...7240000,45540000&InMerch=1&v=2#specifications

Just one little bit of confusion though. It says it's a PATA drive, but then under the 'Highlights' section it says:

# SATA 3Gb/s interface offers blazing fast speed combined with Native Command Queuing (NCQ) for high performance and fast data transfer rates
# Additional SATA features such as hot plug, staggered spin-up, drive LED capable

Does this mean it works as a SATA as well as a PATA, or is this a typo? Last thing I want is a SATA drive turning up as it won't work on my PC otherwise :(

Cris, cheers for all the advice. I can't use XP restore though as I'm running Windows 2000 Professional! I plan on installing the new drive as a slave, using Norton Ghost to copy everything over (Inc. the operating system) then making the new drive the master. That way it should mirror the old hard drive and leave me with an additional 143gb to play with :eek: (y)
 
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