Which SATA II HDD..?

Naj · 29 Jun 2006 at 14:50

I have the ASROCK 939 DUAL SATA2 mobo. Looking to upgrade to SATA II. Willing to spend £50-60 but not sure what to get. The ones that have caught my attention so far are

- Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 10 NCQ 250GB 6V250F0 SATA-II 16MB Cache £61.69
- Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 250GB ST3250620AS SATA-II 16MB Cache £56.34

I'm fairly happy with my current MAxtor but i hear that Seagate are better... They are both the same price so i'm looking from users with experince of any of these 2 to help me figure out which one to buy.. . Oh and are they compatiblw with my mobo..?

Im looking to order one of them off overclockers today!

t31os · 29 Jun 2006 at 14:53

Read the bundles of other posts in this forum practicly asking the same question.

Naj · 29 Jun 2006 at 14:56

t31os said:
Read the bundles of other posts in this forum practicly asking the same question.

I just waned to make sure that they would be compatible with my mobo. Guess most people are leaning towards the Seagate.

div0 · 29 Jun 2006 at 14:58

The Seagate is superior in every sense and comes with a 5 year warrany instead of 3 years. From the looks of things, its also cheaper!!

Without a doubt the Seagate is the better option IMO

t31os · 29 Jun 2006 at 14:58

Yes they will be compatible.

Naj · 29 Jun 2006 at 15:00

Thanks guys, guess i could have asked the question on someone elses thread.

Just ordered the Seagate off overclockers now!

t31os · 29 Jun 2006 at 15:02

Good luck with the drive, i'm sure you'll be happy..

Naj · 30 Jun 2006 at 15:57

I need some help please!

I recieved the Seagate HDD today. I'm having trouble installing XP on to it.

It is recognised in BIOS. As per Seagate's advise, i made a bootable cd of DiscWizard 2003 and partitioned it. Now i am trying to boot from the XP disk but it says "NTLDR missing, press ctrl alt del to restart".

The mobo manual does so that to use a SATA II HDD i need to create a bootable disk of the JMicron driver/contoller and use it on pre install. Here is the thing, the DiscWizard 2003 was an ISO image alreay prepared to make it a bootable disk. But the JMicron driver asks you to take specific files and put them onto a floppy. As i don't have a floppy i need to make a bootable cd. I can make an iso of the files i need to copy but don't know how to make it bootable..? I downloaded something called WinImage which can create bootable images but i haven't a clue how to us it..?

My question.. do i really need to do the above as the Seagate is recognised as HDD "E" and am able to store files on there. Also, even after diabling my new HDD and try to boot the XP disk, it says press any key to enter setup but after a few secs it just loads the HDD into windows. I thought that if i could use the old HDD to get the XP disk to boot up, i should be able to choose what disk i want to install XP on..? Oh am just too confused!

t31os · 30 Jun 2006 at 20:30

Only had to install sata drivers once on my old board, new board detects them without drivers, so can't help you there.

Also never used a seagate, so thats also not something i can advise on, funny how the people recommending go quiet when a problem occurs though.

L_D · 3 Jul 2006 at 23:53

Naj said:
Now i am trying to boot from the XP disk but it says "NTLDR missing, press ctrl alt del to restart"

Sounds like its not booting from CD/DVD. Your CD/DVD may not be bootable, or perhaps you have not enabled booting from CD/DVD drive?

div0 · 4 Jul 2006 at 09:53

Naj said:
The mobo manual does say that to use a SATA II HDD i need to create a bootable disk of the JMicron driver/contoller and use it on pre install. Here is the thing, the DiscWizard 2003 was an ISO image alreay prepared to make it a bootable disk. But the JMicron driver asks you to take specific files and put them onto a floppy. As i don't have a floppy i need to make a bootable cd. I can make an iso of the files i need to copy but don't know how to make it bootable..? I downloaded something called WinImage which can create bootable images but i haven't a clue how to us it..?

My question.. do i really need to do the above as the Seagate is recognised as HDD "E" and am able to store files on there. Also, even after diabling my new HDD and try to boot the XP disk, it says press any key to enter setup but after a few secs it just loads the HDD into windows. I thought that if i could use the old HDD to get the XP disk to boot up, i should be able to choose what disk i want to install XP on..? Oh am just too confused!

I think your problem is definately just in installing the right drivers during the XP install.

Also how many SATA ports does your motherboard have? A lot of motherboards have 4 ports, with 2 pairs. Each pair is often on a different "controller".

Do you know which controller your SATAII drive is using? Is it on the same controller as your older SATA drive? Does your motherboard say whether you can install an SATAII drive in any of the SATA ports, or does it have to be a particular one?

BTW, its usually F6 during the start of the XP install, where you get to install the drivers - but I'm guessing thats what you're talking about, where you need a floppy, but want to use a cd. I ended up "borrowing" an old floppy drive during my SATA install, so I'm afraid I can't help you with using the cd. But it just looks like installing the drivers is all that you need to do