OEM SATA Hardrives - What to Get Yourself?

[CommodoreRed]

I am getting a Seagate Barracuda SATA 150 250gb drive. OEM afraid, so no instructions or cables or brackets included. I am wondering all I'll need and how many, obviously SATA cables and brackets and all that. Anyone have exactly stuff to get? Getting a mobo too which should come with some things...

 

[RichPLS]

Get a retail mobo, oem hard drive.
The motherboard should have all the cables needed, the case should have the brackets, and the oem bare drive is all you need.
But if you do not have any HD screws laying around, you will need 4 of them, and if you don't have any, might stop by a local computer shop and buy an assortment of PC screws for a couple dollars, or just get 4 screws from them, they will probably just give 4 to you.

 

[blue68f100]

The SATA data cables should come with the MB. The power cable adapter may not. Most of the newer PS have that conector now. The only thing is that OEM only has 1 yr warranty, where retail is 3-5 yrs depending on model.

 

[RichPLS]

I just got an Asus A8R-MVP retail board, comes with all connectors for every port it has including SATA, IDE cables, and it comes with power adapters from 4 pin to SATA power connectors which I did not need.
Since today's decent PSU's come with 4 SATA power connectors, and SATA hard drives usually come with both SATA / 4pin Molex power connectors, use only one or the other, not both at same time...

 

[CommodoreRed]

Alright, thought retail mobos come with whatever you'd need. So minus possibly a few screws, should be set getting a OEM HDD and retail mobo and psu and case.

 

[RichPLS]

If you buy a case too, all mounting screws come with it, at least every one I have bought did.
So you would be set!

 

[JoeTechie]

The only thing is that OEM only has 1 yr warranty, where retail is 3-5 yrs depending on model.

This is NOT true. Seagate has 3 Year warranty on ALL OEM drives that are purchased by you, and not pre-installed in a pc. i.e. If your Compaq pc drive takes a dump and you want a free one after the pc 1 year warranty is up - you are SOL, but all the oem drives that you can buy from mail order will have the full 3year warranty on them.

In fact, the newest larger SATA Hd's are now coming with a 5 year warranty again. This is the way it used to be... but when the economy took a downturn 3 years ago - they all decided to make all drives 1 year, then changed it to 3 for Retail, then changed it to 3 for OEM, now it is going back to 5. I think 3 is fair if kept consistent (and will keep the overall cost of the drives down). A pc drive at 4 years old is tiny by standards of that day anyway.

Hope this helps,

Joe