Installing a new Hard Drive?

The only thing that really matters on the size is how much space you want/need. That said, due to prices, I can't really recommend anything other than the Samsung Spinpoint F3 1 TB.

so Samsung hard drives are better than seagate?

They're about the same, but the Samsung is a touch better. It's also $10 cheaper at the moment.

Don't know how stupid this question is but..do you need a second CD/DVD drive or anything like that in order for the hard drive to work?

Nope. You just need a spare drive bay, a SATA cable and an open power connector.

sounds good.

one more thing, if I were to disconnect the hard drive that is installed now and put the new one in its place..will that affect the first hard drive in a bad way?

Also, how do you go about using 2 hard drives?..this is what I am trying to do. I am trying to use the 1 TB as my main drive for games, music, photos, and videos..and the second (which is the original one that is installed already 750GB) I want to use as a backup..do I have to change some sort of settings or anything like that? Please explain, thanks!

samsung drives are no better than seagate drives, but currently, the F3 is slightly better than the 7200.12 seagate series, as well as being cheaper. also, ive had 6 seagate hdds fail, 1 hitachia, 0 samsung, 0 WD, so i dont think they are very reliable.

Samsung it is.  

also, even though you should take newegg reviews like they mean nothing, the seagate drives always get the most 1 egg reviews, and it is usually failure. like here:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

they always have a high 5 egg and 1 egg set of ratings, since when they work, they are good, but its a big when.

yeah, i've noticed that.

It wouldn't negatively affect the first HDD, but you'd have to install an OS on the second drive to use it (assuming you don't have both plugged in at once).

To set up a two drive system is very, very simple. Just plug in the second drive, start up the computer, format the second drive, and start copying/adding files. That's it.

oh ok. so if i were to leave the first one plugged up and then just install the new one i wouldn't have to do the whole OS thing?

That's right.

awesome. i appreciate the help! thanks!!

If you want the new drive to be your boot drive, a better choice would be to install it, then use a program like Acronis True Image Home to clone your primary disk onto it. After that, you'd go into your BIOS and set the hard drive boot order so the new drive is the boot drive.
Then disconnect the old boot drive to make sure everything works properly, in which case you can reconnect it and reformat it or whatever you need to make space available on it for your backups.
Having spent $30 or so on Acronis True Image Home, you can use it to do automatic backups too.

hmm...that's interesting. I will look into that whenever I buy my hard drive. thanks for the info

speaking of boot drives, put any thought into a small ssd?

do not know what that is..

a ssd is a solid state drive. they are very small (32-256 gb usually) and very expensive (100-700$ respectively) but are also EXTREMELY fast, quite, much safer, use less energy, and last longer. what you do is buy a small 32-64 gig drive for 150-300$, and only put your OS and important games, programs, and files on it, and they run EXTREMELY fast.

that's interesting..i had never heard of that

this is an ssd:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

it has no moving parts (hdds have severals discs spinning at 7200rpm+) so you can see why it lasts longer and is safer. it also uses less energy. but what is truly amazing is the speed, the speeds of an ssd are FAST. watch a video or look at benchmarks:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjCmLJtITK4

http://www.guruht.com/2010/05/corsair-force-f200-vs-ocz...

the ssd in the video is old and slow, but the new ones are much faster, but still you can see the difference. the bench shows that ssd vs other ssds and hdds.

There are other downsides to SSDs that haven't been brought up yet. First, SSDs don't work as well if they're full. Typically you need to leave 20% free or more to get the best performance out of them, which means the ones under 80 GB are pretty much useless. Second, SSDs don't like to constantly write data. While they're good for the OS and programs, you shouldn't store anything that needs constant updates or just regular data. Third, the more you use the disk, the slower it gets. This means that your computer will constantly be slower and doing regular maintainence will make it slower.

I personally think that SSDs are too expensive right now to be really worth it unless you've got a large budget. Until the 128 GB ones are around $200 or so, they'll be more useful. There are also still quite a few kinks to work out of them, as it's still new tech. If you were to buy one now, it would be a matter of weeks before the prices would be significantly lower for much better performing drives.

while this is partially true, TRIM has solved most of that, as well as self heal, and a few other things that make them either not degrade, or degrade so slow you will have a new computer by the time it even degrades a little bit. i cant argue with them being too expensive, they are really too expensive, but as far as performance, they are un-paralled, and the price to gb ration is getting better, as well as speed and degredation rate. dont worry, the degredation is barely a problem, and TRIM solves most else.

If you're spending $2k and up, I think an SSD is a must for a new build. Under that, it's not cost-effective for most people.

^agreed, maybe even down to 1500$.

Quick question on those SSD's instead of making a new post. Sorry if I throw this topic off for a post or two.

Can I get a new SSD, throw my OS on it. But keep all my other programs, music, etc etc on the HDD? (Without reformating)

thats the point actually, its called having a boot drive (small ssd with os and a few games or applications) and a storage drive (music, files, less important games and applications, everything else pretty much).

Would it be worthless JUST for the OS though? Or would it be smarter to throw say... WoW, Dreamweaver, and FL Studio on there with it?

"Second, SSDs don't like to constantly write data." Wouldn't most applications be writing data on there constantly? Like windows, wow updates. Constantly using dreamweaver and FL studio. Or does writing data only refer to saving files specifically? If this isn't constantly writing data than what is, your everyday school work, downloading music/movies?

it would be safe to do that, put ur most important games and software, as well as os, and nothing else, and you should be good, fast too lol

Windows mostly does reads, it doesn't do a lot of writing.

SSDs would be less than ideal for, say, a database. Windows, etc. are fine.

O ok thanks a lot guys. Sorry Suig if I kind of swayed your post away from your original question.