I have a Dell studio 540 with a Seagate Barracuda SATA II 3 Gb/s, 32 GB Buffer sizewhich is going bad. I want to upgrade the hard drive but needed to know if the motherboard could support a SATA III 6 Gb/s with a buffer rate of 64GB. Not sure if either transfer rate or buffer rate matter I guess. Appreciate any help I can get before buying the new external hard drive.
Can I upgrade my Dell Studio 540 to use SATA 6Gb/s with a 64 GB buffer size....
- Thread starter gtrainer
- Start date
Yes, it will work just fine. However, do not expect a significant performance boost.
There are NO mechanical HDD's (spinning disks with heads on moving arms) that can actually move data as fast as the 3 Gb/s communication rate of SATA II. So a SATA 6 Gb/s HDD cannot go any faster that your old HDD. But it WILL work - the new SATA units are backwards compatible, so they will work with a SATA II (now called SATA 3 Gb/s) controller.
The size of the cache built into the HDD does not affect compatibility, so there is no problem. The larger cache size will give you a slight increase in performance, but so small you may not notice.
There are NO mechanical HDD's (spinning disks with heads on moving arms) that can actually move data as fast as the 3 Gb/s communication rate of SATA II. So a SATA 6 Gb/s HDD cannot go any faster that your old HDD. But it WILL work - the new SATA units are backwards compatible, so they will work with a SATA II (now called SATA 3 Gb/s) controller.
The size of the cache built into the HDD does not affect compatibility, so there is no problem. The larger cache size will give you a slight increase in performance, but so small you may not notice.
So I purchased a new hard drive (thanks to the advise given on this forum-paperdoc ;-) and was able to successfully hook it up, initialize and format the hard drive. My goal was to clone from the source failing drive to the new drive. Using DiscWizard from Seagate (version of Acronis), I tried to clone. I got a "Failed to read data from disc" as I have errors on the drive. So my questions is cloning didn't work, what's next. Should I try to create an image of the drive externally and then use it on the new drive? Or is my only solution to reinstall everything from scratch? And if so, i guess would need to remove the secondary new drive and make it the primary? HELP!
I just discussed with my son, a Computer Science guy. While there may be ways to clone what you have (except for bad sectors, he advises this is not wise because you will not know which files have been corrupted and copied to the "clean" clone. So you can't find them and fix them. He advises a different route: in brief, do a fresh install of all your OS and app software, then use a data recovery utility to recover all your data files and copy them to the good HDD. Your post says your old HDD is "going bad", so I assume that means you can still boot from it but you get errors during use. This is not a quick solution, but it is sure to get you a good new HDD that works.
So the sequence is
1. Disconnect the old HDD - power and data cables. Connect the new HDD to the port that your old one used to be on.
2. Re-Install your OS from the CD. As the first step, tell it to Delete any Partition already on that HDD so it can start fresh with an empty unit.
3. Re-install all your application software.
4. Update the OS and the software. Now you have a perfectly-functioning computer.
5. Important decision time. Re-connect the old HDD (to a different port) and boot up. Can you see that old unit and access its files? It should show up as a new data storage device, and not as your boot C: drive. If you can access its files, copy all the data files you can to the new good HDD. You do NOT need any of the OS or software files. Do you think you got them all? If yes, skip to Step 8.
6. IF, however, you cannot access that old HDD, or if chunks or it are not accessible, find, download and install a Data Recovery utility. There are many around. Some are free. Some you pay for, but are well known. Some good ones may have free versions suitable for one-time use, of for recovering only a limited bunch of data. I have seen good reports for Get Data Back for NTFS, Recuva, Easeus, and some I can't remember. Look up what you can and see which appeals to you. What you're going to want is something that can search your old HDD and find all (or almost all) your data files.
7. Once you have a recovery utility installed, reconnect your old HDD (to a different port). Run the data recovery utility. It will find all it can on the drive you specify, but will NOT write anything to that unit. That way it can not be damaged further. Instead, it will want to COPY all the files it can to a destination drive you specify. So copy to your new good drive. And as you do, specify which files to copy - you only need data files that you have not yet recovered, and no OS or software files you already re-installed.
8. When done, disconnect and remove the old HDD. Store it for a while in case you decide you missed a file or two and want to try to find it again.
9. Eventually you will decide the old HDD has nothing you need. Now the decision to make is: was it actually going real bad and is unreliable junk, or did it only have a small glitch that can be fixed to allow you to re-use it for something?
So the sequence is
1. Disconnect the old HDD - power and data cables. Connect the new HDD to the port that your old one used to be on.
2. Re-Install your OS from the CD. As the first step, tell it to Delete any Partition already on that HDD so it can start fresh with an empty unit.
3. Re-install all your application software.
4. Update the OS and the software. Now you have a perfectly-functioning computer.
5. Important decision time. Re-connect the old HDD (to a different port) and boot up. Can you see that old unit and access its files? It should show up as a new data storage device, and not as your boot C: drive. If you can access its files, copy all the data files you can to the new good HDD. You do NOT need any of the OS or software files. Do you think you got them all? If yes, skip to Step 8.
6. IF, however, you cannot access that old HDD, or if chunks or it are not accessible, find, download and install a Data Recovery utility. There are many around. Some are free. Some you pay for, but are well known. Some good ones may have free versions suitable for one-time use, of for recovering only a limited bunch of data. I have seen good reports for Get Data Back for NTFS, Recuva, Easeus, and some I can't remember. Look up what you can and see which appeals to you. What you're going to want is something that can search your old HDD and find all (or almost all) your data files.
7. Once you have a recovery utility installed, reconnect your old HDD (to a different port). Run the data recovery utility. It will find all it can on the drive you specify, but will NOT write anything to that unit. That way it can not be damaged further. Instead, it will want to COPY all the files it can to a destination drive you specify. So copy to your new good drive. And as you do, specify which files to copy - you only need data files that you have not yet recovered, and no OS or software files you already re-installed.
8. When done, disconnect and remove the old HDD. Store it for a while in case you decide you missed a file or two and want to try to find it again.
9. Eventually you will decide the old HDD has nothing you need. Now the decision to make is: was it actually going real bad and is unreliable junk, or did it only have a small glitch that can be fixed to allow you to re-use it for something?
TRENDING THREADS
-
-
Question Microsoft Defender found Trojans on my PC- Started by Tommy Sawyer
- Replies: 4
-
Question Can I just upgrade my graphics card or should I be upgrading my processor as well for UE5?- Started by Tolstoy1990
- Replies: 7
-
-
-
Discussion What's your favourite video game you've been playing?- Started by amdfangirl
- Replies: 3K
Latest posts
-
-
Question Microsoft Defender found Trojans on my PC
- Latest: ohio_buckeye
-
-
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram