Building a Computer, which HDD?

Tigjaw

Tigjaw

Tigjaw

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Hi guys,

I'm building a computer, this time for my dad and he's decided he wants a new HDD instead of using his old one because his old HDD is FAT32 and he fancies an upgrade to NTFS.

Anyway, I can choose graphics cards, I can choose RAM, I can choose the CPU, hell I can even figure out which motherboard is most suitable but I'm really not that sure about Hard-drives. They should, theoretically be the most simple component to choose but what's put me off from deciding this is the massive range of seemingly identical products!

Anyway, my dad's got an external HDD which is rather big and he keeps most of his personal files and whatnot on their for safekeeping so he doesn't need the main HDD to be too big, no bigger than 200GB really and he probably doesn't even need half that.

I was hoping I could have a few suggestions from my fellow, more experienced system builders. It wasn't so difficult when I was choosing my own computer components but now, this is my dad's money so I'd appreciate all the advice I can get.

Thanks in advance,

Regards,

Josh

EDIT:
P.S: I was looking at:
Hitachi Deskstar 7K160 160GB ATA-133 8MB Cache - £34 inc VAT

It seems good but is it NTFS?
 
Last edited:
Tigjaw said:
P.S: I was looking at:
Hitachi Deskstar 7K160 160GB ATA-133 8MB Cache - £34 inc VAT

It seems good but is it NTFS?
Click to expand...
All the (brand new) drives I've come across, are unformatted. It is upto you wich file system you use - FAT/16/32 or NTFS. Either way, the drive will support it.

So, to answer you question, it will be NTFS when you format it so.

I've always sworn by Hitachi/IBM hard-drives. That's why I have one drive approaching 4 years of working age with no problems, and another almost 2.5 years of working age - most of the time, they are running 24/7!

Do yourself a favour, do NOT touch Maxtor hard-drives - not even if your friends say they are good and cheap. Maxtor are (in my eyes) budget drives, not designed to last, and destined to the hard-drive heaven within a year (if you're lucky).

Roll on in a few weeks time, when I buy a 320/400gb Hitachi, with 16mb of cache. :cool:
 
Thanks for the replies guys, I'll take a look at those drives and show them to my dad.

jbloggs said:
Tigjaw:

FAT32 and NTFS are "file systems" that are decided by the OS not the HDD, see Here
Click to expand...

I know that they're file systems and I thought the file system was decided by the OS but when my dad tried to reformat his old drive to NTFS from FAT32 it wouldn't let him for whatever reason so I assumed that the HDD had to be compatible with the file system in question?

basmic said:
Do yourself a favour, do NOT touch Maxtor hard-drives - not even if your friends say they are good and cheap. Maxtor are (in my eyes) budget drives, not designed to last, and destined to the hard-drive heaven within a year (if you're lucky).
Click to expand...

lol thanks for the tip, I got the idea they weren't great but now I know for sure :D
 
basmic said:
Do yourself a favour, do NOT touch Maxtor hard-drives - not even if your friends say they are good and cheap. Maxtor are (in my eyes) budget drives, not designed to last, and destined to the hard-drive heaven within a year (if you're lucky).
Click to expand...

fibs, i've got 7 or 8 maxtors all running fine. the only hdd i've had fail on me was an ancient seagate
 
elfy said:
fibs, i've got 7 or 8 maxtors all running fine. the only hdd i've had fail on me was an ancient seagate
Click to expand...
I've literally seen dozens of dead Maxtors.

Some people are lucky with them, but everybody else seems to have bad luck. :/
 
Do not touch Maxtor's.
Partition type is not related to the drive, you can format any drive as ext (linux) or FAT16/32 or NTFS.

You haven't said what PC & HD your dad has...sounds like he wants to upgrade for the sake of it? Why not add or replace the HD on the existing system, if it's good enough, ie 1.8ghz PC with 1GB of RAM is fine for net/browsing.
 
squiffy said:
Do not touch Maxtor's.
Partition type is not related to the drive, you can format any drive as ext (linux) or FAT16/32 or NTFS.

You haven't said what PC & HD your dad has...sounds like he wants to upgrade for the sake of it? Why not add or replace the HD on the existing system, if it's good enough, ie 1.8ghz PC with 1GB of RAM is fine for net/browsing.
Click to expand...

well as I said, when he told me that he couldn't reformat the HDD to NTFS I was stumped myself because I know that the file system has nothing to do with the HDD but since it didn't work I simply assumed that a hard drive has to be compatible with the file system in question.

His computer isn't too bad, spec wise, but it's always crashing and compared to mine, it's as slow as a limp snail, so he's taken liberty of using my own computer for writing/copying/decoding all his DVDs (he "records" all the series he watches and puts them onto the computer to put the menu on etc) and I just can't have it! :)

His computer has a maximum RAM capacity of 756mb PC2000 which isn't really worth upgrading to and his processor is an old 2.8Ghz P4 but on top of that one by one his USB ports are dying, I think his motherboard has had it to be honest.

So he wants to join the techies by building a new computer, just 'cause he's my dad don't assume he's the usual "what's this button do?" fogie :), he probably gets as much use out of his computer than most people on this forum.
 
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