BogMonster Posted October 4, 2006 Share Posted October 4, 2006 Quick question for you learned IT types.... I have a Dell Dimension 2400 P4/2.66 which I guess is about 3 years old. Want to get a bigger hard drive for it partly because I have a complete reinstall looming and can kill two birds with one stone, and partly because it is over half full and I have just got a 9 megapixel camera which turns out some "largish files"... There seem to be some variations in types these days. I kno wot the diferuntz iz between IDE and SCSI and in the good old days only flash expensive PCs had SCSI drives in so you just asked for "one of them normal ones" but how do I tell if I want an ATA 100 or EIDE or SATAII or doobreywotsit28? The PC will just have "whatever Dell fitted to their cheapish bargain PCs at that time" nothing fancy was specified. If I pull the PC to bits will it be writ large on the old one, or can I tell from setup somewhere? Which is the best (assuming SATAII?) and how much performance difference between the different types? I obviously don't want to end up with something that chugs like a 2.25 diesel towing a caravan Anything to choose between brands these days (always tended to go for Western Digital in the past but its been a few years since I bought one). Ta Stephen Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
white90 Posted October 4, 2006 Share Posted October 4, 2006 http://forums.lr4x4.com/index.php?showtopic=8555 one of these may help? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BogMonster Posted October 4, 2006 Author Share Posted October 4, 2006 Yeah will look there if nobody has the answer but I figure somebody will probably be able to say "Yeah it is an xyz" off the top of their head Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moose Posted October 4, 2006 Share Posted October 4, 2006 Quick question for you learned IT types....I have a Dell Dimension 2400 P4/2.66 which I guess is about 3 years old. Want to get a bigger hard drive for it partly because I have a complete reinstall looming and can kill two birds with one stone, and partly because it is over half full and I have just got a 9 megapixel camera which turns out some "largish files"... There seem to be some variations in types these days. I kno wot the diferuntz iz between IDE and SCSI and in the good old days only flash expensive PCs had SCSI drives in so you just asked for "one of them normal ones" but how do I tell if I want an ATA 100 or EIDE or SATAII or doobreywotsit28? The PC will just have "whatever Dell fitted to their cheapish bargain PCs at that time" nothing fancy was specified. If I pull the PC to bits will it be writ large on the old one, or can I tell from setup somewhere? Which is the best (assuming SATAII?) and how much performance difference between the different types? I obviously don't want to end up with something that chugs like a 2.25 diesel towing a caravan Anything to choose between brands these days (always tended to go for Western Digital in the past but its been a few years since I bought one). Ta Stephen use google to check the motherboad specs of your machine but I think you will only get away with IDE ATA100 will def not beable to use SATA or SCSI they use diff connectors (square peg round hole type thing) if you are talking performance to price SATA is very good i can get over 60M per second write speed to a one of those.. hope this helps Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FridgeFreezer Posted October 4, 2006 Share Posted October 4, 2006 Any normal 3.5" IDE drive (NOT SATA or SCSI) will do - the best price/storage ratio seems to be around the 200-400Gb mark - Look here for ideas/prices. IDE drives will also have things like ATA100 after their names, ignore it all for your purposes the important thing is not to end up with a SATA (Serial ATA) as these are more like a USB-style (serial) connection than the traditional IDE 40-pin connector and so rather obviously will not fit. If you need/want it you can buy an SATA interface card for a few quid and plug that in, but currently I don't think there's enough benefit / price difference to warrant it. Current generation motherboards can't transfer data fast enough internally to take advantage of SATA's speed anyway. I have several external 3.5" enclosures that let you stick a normal IDE drive in and connect it with USB, I keep the internal HDD for Windows and the external ones as storage for my documents and photos / MP3's etc. 'cos then they're easy to swap between PC's or take round to your mate's house to show your holiday pics / backup your MP3 collections (purely for data security should anyone from the RIAA or Sony Music be reading this ) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BogMonster Posted October 4, 2006 Author Share Posted October 4, 2006 (edited) thanks I have never had this PC to bits so maybe better check the plugs, I know what the old ones look like looking at www.novatech.co.uk there seem to be wildly differing transfer speeds too! edited after reading FF's reply - so there are basically 2 sorts then IDE and SATA? I know it won't be SCSI for sure so it sounds like normal IDE then same as my old PC. thats what I needed to know, ta Edited October 4, 2006 by BogMonster Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FridgeFreezer Posted October 4, 2006 Share Posted October 4, 2006 Unless you're video editing it's not gonna make a huge difference - none of them will be slow, it's usually just to impress the L33t H4x0Rz who have their PC specs in their signatures (mine's faster than yours) a bit like chequebook off-roaders really... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BogMonster Posted October 4, 2006 Author Share Posted October 4, 2006 Unless you're video editing it's not gonna make a huge difference - none of them will be slow, it's usually just to impress the L33t H4x0Rz who have their PC specs in their signatures (mine's faster than yours) a bit like chequebook off-roaders really... OK ta. Not a chequebook PC user wot's a l33t h4x0rz apart from maybe somebody who was trying to type after too much to drink Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FridgeFreezer Posted October 4, 2006 Share Posted October 4, 2006 L33t Speak also Wikipedia Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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