What hard drive to buy for VIA KM400A

Hi,

My brother's computer needs some more storage, and he is asking me for help.

He has a HP a510n, and it's got a VIA KM400A motherboard I believe.

On the specs, it states Ultra DMA or Two (2) UDMA/133 IDE controllers

I looked on Newegg, should I buy the IDE / Ultra ATA 133 hard drives? Not sure if thats the right type.

PS. They seem quite pricey, over 50 bucks for a 320GB, when I got my 500GB SATA2 for 49.99

What you need is a disks with a P-Ata interface (falsely called IDE). Whether Udma/100 or Udma/133 isn't important.

Check the Web for any known incompatibilities (bugs) between disks and VIA KM400A.

P-Ata is more expensive that S-Ata because the interface costs more to produce: chips, connectors... And because competition has shrunk now. But they're affordable at eBay - as opposed to mainstream retailers who scrapped P-Ata from their offerings.

I bought many used disks and had no more trouble with them than with new disks.

The latest fast disks in P-Ata is the 7k160 (= J8160), but is limited to 160GB. Others have somewhat slower arms.

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Other solutions:

- Add a S-Ata host on a Pci slot. Bootable (check it before), no size limit, modern disks. BUT the Pci is limited to about 70MB/s at Via so you'll have to look for unofficial software fixes for the Pci.

- Throw away your Via, as its hardware is full of bugs.