Hard Drive compatibility

2007-12-30 23:32:38

#1

Darkhelmet: cereal killer; +233|7229|the middle of nowhere

Ok, I'm looking to purchase another hard drive for my Dell Dimension 4600 computer. There is already the default 40GB piece of crap dell hard drive in there. There are two hard drive bays in my computer for 1 inch IDE drives to go in. There are also two 7-pin Serial ATA connectors in my computer. One of those IDE bays is already filled with the default drive, of course. I don't want to fully replace the hard drive I have now, I just want to add a new one for space purposes and to put stuff on (run games off of, etc.) and I'm not sure what drives would work on my computer.

Would an internal SATA hard drive like this one work?

Would I have to buy separate jumpers/cables for it?

Or should I just go with this internal IDE hard drive?

Will it fit in the extra IDE bay, and what is the difference between ATA Ultra 100 (which the above drive is) and ATA Ultra 133? Will it work with my mobo?

Also: That IDE drive is an IDE Ultra ATA 100 and I'm assuming that it means it's just a regular IDE Drive that would go into an IDE bay. The "100" and "133" might refer to height though.

I hope I didn't post this late enough to get some feedback, I'm going to bead right now. Good night.

2007-12-30 23:34:47

#2

jsnipy: ...; +3,277|7000|...

I'd just go with IDE drive for that, less trouble. You could get a pci card so you run sata drives.

2007-12-30 23:44:33

#3

Darkhelmet: cereal killer; +233|7229|the middle of nowhere

Also, if I went with that IDE drive, would I have to install anything onto it if I was just going to use it as a secondary drive to put/run games off of or to put music or pictures on?

2007-12-30 23:48:51

#4

jsnipy: ...; +3,277|7000|...

You wouldn't have to install anything else, it would just appear as a second drive (unless you mounted in an ntfs folder on your C: drive).

Now if you installed a game on it there would be some dependency there as the game would be looking to whatever drive letter your new drive ended up being.

If you are soley going to put thing like music, images, etc (i.e. not install programs to it), I would suggest getting a SATA drive and an external USB enclosure.

Last edited by jsnipy (2007-12-30 23:52:42)

2007-12-31 00:06:54

#5

Catbox: forgiveness; +505|7194

if you have serial ata connectors on your motherboard than definitely get the SATA drive...
SATA is a lot faster...

i assume you are using XP...NTFS

XP will recognize most disks... sata or ide

Love is the answer

2007-12-31 05:43:48

#6

Funky_Finny: Banned; +456|6610|Carnoustie, Scotland

I've got a 4600.
And I'm running two 80GB HDD.
Ripped from two different computers.
I tell you, this computer will take anything and it'll be compaitible. Just buy a drive from your nearest PC world, doesn't have to be anything major, if you're only going to be running games and stuff, doesn't sound like you need 300GB of space, and the pc we have, it would be kinda pointless to get something big fancy and expensive.

2007-12-31 05:48:50

#7

Bertster7: Confused Pothead; +1,101|7059|SE London

[TUF]Catbox wrote:
if you have serial ata connectors on your motherboard than definitely get the SATA drive...
SATA is a lot faster...

Meh, the SATA interface is much faster, but the speed the drives run at is almost identical and neither max out their available bandwidth anyway....

The biggest benefit is having the nice small cables that help airflow - unless you have some exceptionally high speed devices connected by SATA.

2007-12-31 06:34:48

#8

jaymz9350: Member; +54|7055

Funky_Finny wrote:
Just buy a drive from your nearest PC world, doesn't have to be anything major, if you're only going to be running games and stuff, doesn't sound like you need 300GB of space, and the pc we have, it would be kinda pointless to get something big fancy and expensive.

except that it can go in the next PC. I would find the biggest good brand (ie seagate, western digital) drive that's in you budget. You never really know how much space you'll need in the near future. In about one year i went from being happy with 100 gig to now having about 500.

2007-12-31 06:41:15

#9

Aries_37: arrivederci frog; +368|7053|London

Go IDE tbh, its cheaper for you and pretty much the same speed as 7200rpm sata drives. Just remember the slave/master jumpers.

The only real way to get a speed boost is to go with SATA 10000rpm drives that cost A LOT more (prices of 10000rpm 36gb = 7200rpm 500gb)

Last edited by Aries_37 (2007-12-31 06:42:36)

2007-12-31 06:47:07

#10

Bertster7: Confused Pothead; +1,101|7059|SE London

Aries_37 wrote:
Go IDE tbh, its cheaper for you and pretty much the same speed as 7200rpm sata drives. Just remember the slave/master jumpers.

The only real way to get a speed boost is to go with SATA 10000rpm drives that cost A LOT more (prices of 10000rpm 36gb = 7200rpm 500gb)

10K rpm drives are a waste of money. For access times, a good 750GB 7200rpm drive with 150GB of data on will outperform a 150GB Raptor that is more than 50% full, due to higher data densities and low seek times for cylinders on the outer edge of the drive. For high speed block transfers a RAID array is the way to go.

2007-12-31 10:23:27

#11

Darkhelmet: cereal killer; +233|7229|the middle of nowhere

So, I'm also assuming that the SATA drive comes with the power and sata connectors?

2007-12-31 10:29:02

#12

Agent_Dung_Bomb: Member; +302|7214|Salt Lake City

Get the SATA drive. Buying an IDE drive now is a waste of your money. In case you haven't noticed, some boards don't even have IDE connectors any more, and when they do they are often implemented using crappy third party chipsets. With SATA there are no master/slave jumper configs to play with. Just install the drive, connect the power and data cable, and you're good to go. Worst case scenario is that you may have to go into the the drive management utility and activate the drive in Windows.

Now I'm not sure what your chassis looks like, but it the drives mount similar to the the way the GX series cases from Dell are configured, then you may want to find a cable with a 90 degree connector.

2007-12-31 10:33:16

#13

RoosterCantrell: Goodbye :); +399|6958|Somewhere else

Darkhelmet wrote:
So, I'm also assuming that the SATA drive comes with the power and sata connectors?

If you are buying from newegg.com the pictures will show you what comes with the drives, in my experience with newegg, they never send the drives with anything. In fact, they hard drives dont even come in a box, just wrapped in bubble wrap. It allows them to sell the drives cheaper so you aren't paying for fancy packages.

Cables will most likely be seperate.

Also, the power cable should be nothing but an extra connector coming off of your Power supply unit, and in older computer, sometimes they don't have the right connector so:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a … 6812201002

You'll need something similiar possibly, and this one may not be the one you need. this is the female 4-pin connector, you may need the male connector.

Last edited by RoosterCantrell (2007-12-31 10:37:20)

2007-12-31 11:01:52

#14

Darkhelmet: cereal killer; +233|7229|the middle of nowhere

Would this sata connector work?

BF2S Forums Hard Drive compatibility

[TUF]Catbox wrote:

Funky_Finny wrote:

Aries_37 wrote:

Darkhelmet wrote:

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