New SATA drive

Dogboy73 · 6 Jan 2007 at 21:23

I'm looking for a new internal drive to replace my ageing 40GB IDE. The drive size has never really been an issue so I reckon 80GB will be ample for my needs. Obviously I'd like a newer SATA drive as well.

I also have an Nforce3 based mobo (MSI Neo2 Platinum 2) & from research I've done it appears some SATA drives have problems with NForce3 boards. Is this the case?

And how simple will it be to install the actual drive & then install XP on this? is it as straightforward as installing an IDE? I understand there are 1 or 2 procedures that need to be carried out before you can install the drive? Is that right?

Thanks,
DB

daven1986 · 6 Jan 2007 at 22:12

for a single drive no drivers are needed. just plug in the drive, enable it in the bios if necessary (it wasn't for me) and then install windows

Ronaldo · 6 Jan 2007 at 22:34

if drivers are needed then for the SATA controller, downloaded them from MSi site and put it on floppy and when you load XP cd it will ask for 3rd party press f6 or sumthing, then u can load the drivers and it should install

Dogboy73 · 7 Jan 2007 at 10:50

So it shouldn't be a p[roblem installing it then. Cool.

But what about this business with NForce3 mobos?

malcolm · 7 Jan 2007 at 12:06

Not sure what problems you refer to. I'm running a pair of SATA drives on my Gigabyte nForce 3, the boot disc is a WD Raptor (36Gig) and I have had no problems.

Your biggest problem will be getting a new one small enough! No that's silly, they are still available down to 40, but the sweet spot in £/Gigabyte is around the 300Gig mark now.

33L · 7 Jan 2007 at 13:02

you will probably find such a small difference in price between and 80 and say a 200gig drive that it will b hardly worth the 80 since the 200 will have more resale value if you ever need to get rid. just a thought

Dogboy73 · 11 Feb 2007 at 13:32

I think I'll go for one of these babies;

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-093-SE

....... Hang on, That's a SATA II drive. I need to check if that's going to be a problem wirth my MSI K8N Neo2 mobo. Bloody minefiled this game, ey?

rpstewart · 11 Feb 2007 at 14:12

SATA2 is backwards compatible with SATA1, worst case you'll have to set a jumper on the drive if your board can't complete speed negotiation properly.

The drive you've picked is an older generation, there are faster ones out there.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-022-HI

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-085-SE

Dogboy73 · 11 Feb 2007 at 15:20

What's faster about it. The seek time?

Biscuity · 11 Feb 2007 at 16:26

I've had several MSI mobos in the past & they can be trouble. I'd suggest that you check on the excellent MSI forum just to make sure you won't get any probs.

http://forum.msi.com.tw/index.php?sid=

Dogboy73 · 11 Feb 2007 at 18:48

Biscuity said:
I've had several MSI mobos in the past & they can be trouble. I'd suggest that you check on the excellent MSI forum just to make sure you won't get any probs.

http://forum.msi.com.tw/index.php?sid=

I've had a quick scoot round on there. didn't find to much specific stuff about the mobo I have & Seagate SATA drives. someone was complaining that formatting his 300GB SATA seemed to be taking to long. Didn't say it didn't work though.

Just ordered myself an 80GB Seagate Barracuda & an NEC DVD burner (I don't currently have a DVD-RW drive). £62 the lot including VAT & delivery. Can't argue with that

For £10 more I could have bought a 160GB drive but I rekcon 80GB will do me fine. I have a 40GB IDE at the moment & I'm 4GB away from filling it for the first time since I bought my PC (about 6-7 years ago). Good house keeping is what it's all about

rpstewart · 11 Feb 2007 at 19:21

Dogboy73 said:
What's faster about it. The seek time?

Sustained transfer rate, the 7200.9 has a comparitively low data density compared to the ones I linked (the Hitachi is a single platter!). That means less data passes under the head per revolution and hence the 7200.9 can't supply data as quickly.

Biscuity · 11 Feb 2007 at 19:28

Dogboy73 said:
Just ordered myself an 80GB Seagate Barracuda & an NEC DVD burner (I don't currently have a DVD-RW drive). £62 the lot including VAT & delivery. Can't argue with that For £10 more I could have bought a 160GB drive but I rekcon 80GB will do me fine. I have a 40GB IDE at the moment & I'm 4GB away from filling it for the first time since I bought my PC (about 6-7 years ago). Good house keeping is what it's all about

Well good luck with the build. 40gb is also about not playing games & not having much music on your 'puter too!

Dogboy73 · 11 Feb 2007 at 22:05

I do play games but not that much. I tend to have 1 or 2 games installed at a time. At the moment I just have HL2 & CSS + a couple of SP 3rd party Source games. I mostly have music software like Reason & Sound Forge. That doesn't take up much space. I've got loads of audio but again I've been clearing out the samples & sounds I don't use.

realscot · 11 Feb 2007 at 22:13

Dogboy73 said:
Good house keeping is what it's all about

Very true, i'm too lazy and I always end up filling my 500GB WD before i know it, I just can't be bothered burning stuff, yet i don't want to delete movies i've watched! Cos sure as hell, as soon as you delete it the missus will ask you "have you still got that film....."

naro · 12 Feb 2007 at 16:56

realscot said:
Very true, i'm too lazy and I always end up filling my 500GB WD before i know it, I just can't be bothered burning stuff, yet i don't want to delete movies i've watched! Cos sure as hell, as soon as you delete it the missus will ask you "have you still got that film....."

yup.. i'm also like you, i dont delete the movies that i've watched and the files just pile up!!

just get more hdds to store them cos they're getting cheaper and cheaper..

Corasik · 13 Feb 2007 at 00:55

rpstewart said:
Sustained transfer rate, the 7200.9 has a comparitively low data density compared to the ones I linked (the Hitachi is a single platter!). That means less data passes under the head per revolution and hence the 7200.9 can't supply data as quickly.

Which is why, if your wise you get a 7200.10. The 9's out of date.

Dogboy73 · 17 Feb 2007 at 00:38

I got my SATA drive from OC (Very fast delivery). I'm going to install it tomorrow. My plan is to keep the 40GB IDE for a bit with XP installed. I'll run the SATA for a while just for storage.

But later I'll want to install XP on the SATA & keep the IDE for storage/Back up. How will I set this up (any thing I need to change in the BIOS for example)? And what's the procedure? I'm guessing use my XP disk to format the C drive (my IDE) & then hopefully I'll be prompted to install XP on one of my 2 HD's. From here I just choose the SATA drive. Is that about it or is there more to it?

Thanks for everyone's help & advice on here so far BTW. So glad I've got a place I can get this kind of info. Very helpful so thanks for that.

Cupra · 17 Feb 2007 at 02:41

you will need to change boot priority to the drive u want to boot windows from (just like when u change it to cd to install windows)

rpstewart · 17 Feb 2007 at 08:42

Dogboy73 said:
But later I'll want to install XP on the SATA & keep the IDE for storage/Back up. How will I set this up (any thing I need to change in the BIOS for example)? And what's the procedure? I'm guessing use my XP disk to format the C drive (my IDE) & then hopefully I'll be prompted to install XP on one of my 2 HD's. From here I just choose the SATA drive. Is that about it or is there more to it?

Don't format the IDE drive until you've got XP working properly on the SATA one, that way if it all goes pear shaped you've got a working install to go back to. The best option is to physically disconnect the IDE drive while you go through the XP setup, it's then safe and XP won't decide to put the boot files on it and the rest on the SATA drive as it sometimes has a tendency to do.

Assuming your SATA drive is setup in single drive mode and the boot priority is set to CD then SATA the install should be simple.