PC Hard Drive Source

[Ken Massingale]

Time for a bigger and faster drive. Where do you folks recommend?
Is there any negative to using SATA drives for the OS? MY MB supports SATA 1.5 gb transfer but not 3 gb.

TIA

[Hellrazor]

I order most of my stuff through the following places:

1. www.mwave.com
2. www.newegg.com
3. www.outpost.com

I had some trouble with SATA drives and using it as a boot drive on this PC. But that was a driver related issue during the install of XP.

[sparkeyjames]

I recommend Western Digital sata hard drives. From any of the following places.

www.microcenter.com
www.bestbuy.com
www.newegg.com
www.zipzoomfly.com

Sometimes Bestbuy will have a great deal on a HD that is hard to beat plus you may have one local and can get it in store instead of waiting for shipping. All the others have very good prices all the time with reasonable shipping rates especialy Newegg. Newegg's customer service is also excellent.

Best deal I have seen so far for a boxed retail hard drive is this one.

http://www.microcenter.com/byos/byos...duct_id=229382

For an OEM (drive ONLY in antistatic plastic bag no cable etc) this one is priced right.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822144417

happy shopping.

sparkeyjames


ps If you go for the cableless OEM drive I'm pretty sure I have one sitting around here unused as all
my drives are either SCSI or PATA. I'll mail it to ya. just PM me.

[RayintheUK]

I got two large capacity SATA drives and set them up as a Mirror RAID. Much quicker and the need for backing up allegedly disappears (I still do the crucial stuff).

Ray.

[parnelli]

Frys has a PATA 200G Seagate for 49 ($0.24/G)
http://shop4.outpost.com/product/400...H:MAIN_RSLT_PG

Circuit city has a SATA 250G WD drive for 59 after $35 rebate this week. ($0.14/G +tax)
http://www.circuitcity.com/ccd/Searc...go.x=9&go.y=10

Frys has a SATA 320G WD for 79 shipped free here: ($0.24/G)
http://shop4.outpost.com/product/516...H:MAIN_RSLT_PG

Frys has a SATA 500G Seagate for 119 shipped free here: ($0.23/G)
http://shop4.outpost.com/product/469...H:MAIN_RSLT_PG

Keep an eye on warranty length. IIRC Seagate's are 5 years, WD retail 1 yr, WD OEM 5yr

[LinuxRandal]

I believe Fry's had some 500gb drives for $119 (found via spoofee.com).

I also use pricwatch.com quite a bit, and I prefer Seagate drives anymore (5 year warranty).

Currently, half my drives were bought dead, at a used computer store (bought from freight auction), and sent in and replaced under warranty.

[Ken Massingale]

Thanks guys. That 500 gb at Fry's looks like the ticket. Since my MB has a 150 SATA interface the 300 Seagate will work, just slower, right?

[parnelli]

Thanks guys. That 500 gb at Fry's looks like the ticket. Since my MB has a 150 SATA interface the 300 Seagate will work, just slower, right?

It'll work just fine, and I don't think you'll see much if any difference in speed. 3.0 is faster than the transfer rate of the disks themselves- there are some implementation differences between the two, but I've not noticed a difference in everday usage situations. Your mileage may vary.

[jackellis]

I've been taking a different approach since disk drives are so cheap by using two drives. One drive has the operating system and applications in one partition and data in another. The other drive has just data that's copied over every night using a freeware product called IceMirror. Then I back up yet again to a server that's in another room.

Most people just can't be relied upon to take the time to back stuff up, including my wife who is usually obsessive about such things. You can usually install two drives in most home desktop computers. Even if the motherboard does not come with SATA raid, there are relatively cheap solutions to install it or alternatively to simply copy the files somewhere else once each day.

[sacherjj]

One think I picked up that I am really liking is NAS Drive Kit from ADS Technologies. We have a couple computers on our home network. This is a little device that you can use to hold up to a 400 Gb drive. (PATA, not SATA). It is then accessible from all computers. A speed demon it is not. However, with SmartSync scheduled to do backups around 2 am, speed isn't really an issue. This is an easy way of doing backups. If this drive is tucked away in the corner, it should still provide you with a backup even if your PC is stolen in a burglary.

For getting good hard drive prices, I routinely visit slickdeals.net, hotdealsclub.com, and bensbargains.net. Good deals from all the the sites mentioned above are listed there. I usually buy not for size, but for price per Gb. You should be able to find a quality drive about 200 Gb in the $0.25 per Gb level.

[Alex Franke]

I got the 500GB drive from Fry's a couple weeks ago -- highly recommended. It's the first time I bought through Fry's online. Normally I buy my electronics from newegg.com (computers) or buydig.com (camera stuff).

[gerti]

I got two large capacity SATA drives and set them up as a Mirror RAID. Much quicker and the need for backing up allegedly disappears (I still do the crucial stuff).

A mirror Raid (Raid 1) might protect you from data loss due to a disk failure. It will not protect you from:

- Accidentally erasing data
- Some malware erasing data
- The OS 'fixing' the disk and corrupting everything
- Theft, water, fire, electrical storm

Also note that not everything 'RAID' means protection. RAID 0 for example basically adds two drives together to increase capacity. Of course your failure rate just doubled...

[wyc_93]

I do bensbargains.net as well, and I've had good experiences with newegg.com. I've had a western digital hard drive replaced under warranty without problem, and I'd recommend buying it with a credit card (such as American Express) which doubles your warranty (up to one additional year). I've also taken advantage of the AmEx with a laptop repair without problem (a SD card reader went south at 14 months. . .)

Oh, and Seagate HD's have 5 year warranties these days

Of course, as may have been mentioned previously, warranties may replace hard drives, but it won't replace data. . . buying an external enclosure to periodically do backups is pretty cheap insurance. . .