HDD advice

Stelly · 2 Jul 2007 at 12:52

Hey All,

TO save space I have decided that I'm going to put a lot of my DVDs on my computer... which is legal

... anyway I'm thinking about getting a couple of 1TB HDDs but I dont know what way to go about it... I currently have

2x500Gb
2x320Gb
2x32Gb (Raptors)

I was thinking about getting an SATA controller card and using that in conjunction with the 1Tb HDDs.... what you think?

I was also thinking that I might need a better PSU as I'm running the following on a Seasonic 600w PSU...

Q6700
2Gb RAM
8800GTX

Advice is needed and appriciated

Stelly

rpstewart · 2 Jul 2007 at 14:26

Storing DVDs on your PC is actually illegal in the EU although it's highly unlikely that anyone is going to complain.

If you're out of SATA ports then a controller card is your only option, a PCIe 1x one will give you better bandwidth than a PCI one although for storage purposes the PCI bus isn't going to be a bottleneck really. If the Raptors aren't RAIDed though I'd be tempted to ditch them and use those ports.

The PSU shouldn't be an issue, an HDD will only use 15-20W tops, far less when idling.

Stelly · 2 Jul 2007 at 14:52

Cheers... can you also tell me... do I have to enable SATA II on my 7200.10??

Stelly

rpstewart · 2 Jul 2007 at 15:14

There will be a jumper on the drive to enable 300Mb/s operation (SATA II isn't a defined standard just a marketing name for 300Mb/s, NCQ etc). f it's easily accessible then go ahead and remove it but if doing so means any major dismantling then I wouldn't bother. There will be no appreciable speed difference because the drive cannot sustain any more than about 80-85Mb/s so it isn't constrained by running on a 150Mb/s interface.

Stelly · 2 Jul 2007 at 15:27

rpstewart said:
There will be a jumper on the drive to enable 300Mb/s operation (SATA II isn't a defined standard just a marketing name for 300Mb/s, NCQ etc). f it's easily accessible then go ahead and remove it but if doing so means any major dismantling then I wouldn't bother. There will be no appreciable speed difference because the drive cannot sustain any more than about 80-85Mb/s so it isn't constrained by running on a 150Mb/s interface.

Fair enough I didn't think that it was that much of a difference anyway... when virtualising 4 servers I dont notice a difference to be honest with you

Stelly