Having a large HDD as operating system

[Guru]

I've just had a HDD die on me. I've currently got:

Maxtor 4D080HD - 80gig IDE (the dead one)
Western Digital WDC WD2000JD-22HBB0 - 200gb Sata

Am thinking of buying a 500gig one to have as a replacement to the 80 which was my C drive (windows etc)

Should I think about partitioning the drive? If so how big should I make the C: Drive?

or should I try to clear down the 200 and use that for the c:?

Which HDD would run better as the C: Drive?

My MOBO is a Gigabyte GA-K8NF-9 nForce4

Does anyone know if this will run a SATA2 drive?

Can anyone recommend a 500gb HDD please

Cheers,

G

 

[fobose]

SATA II is backwards compatible with SATA I - I currently have 2 500GB Seagate 7200.9's on my old motherboard which has SATA I connectors - the only difference is the maximum speed you can get from either (I - 150MB/s max, II - 300MB/s max).

I run my drives in RAID 1 incase one breaks I dont have to reinstall windows, I can just plug in a replacement drive and the remaining original one copies itself on to the new one. I have a 40GB C drive and a 426GB D drive (the rest of the 500GB).

I would install windows on your new drive (when you get it) because as its newer it will more than likely be faster than your old sata drive. The western digital AAKS drives are supposedly the fastest at the moment.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-120-WD&groupid=701&catid=14&subcat=768