Please Help, Many Hard Disk Queries

[jy88888888]

(Questions are in CAPS)
On my motherboard I have 2 UDMA ATA 66/100 slots but I am using a 4 year old 6.4Gb hard disk which is developing bad sectors. My system is custom built with an AMD Athlon XP1700+ but I still find it pretty slow in Windows. Loading applications takes quite some time. IS THIS BECAUSE OF MY HARD DISK? - it's rather noisy as well. It's divided into two partitions, one for windows and applications and the other for mp3s and my work. IF I BUY A NEW HARD DISK, CAN I MOVE ALL MY MP3S TO IT OR AM I BETTER OFF SETTING MY OLD HARD DISK DRIVE AS A SLAVE TO THE NEW ONE? WILL I BE ABLE TO SPLIT THE NEW HARD DRIVE INTO 2 PARTITIONS USING MICROSOFT FDISK? I don't have any RAID or SCSI controllers but I would like a 20-40 Gb hard drive with noticeable differences in performance terms compared with my current hard disk. WILL A 7200RPM IDE HARD DISK WITH AN 8.5 SEEK TIME BE A GOOD BUY? I've heard the Seagate Barracuda 4 series are a good buy. WHAT BRAND AND MODEL WOULD YOU GO FOR?

AMD VS INTEL - AMD anyday

 

[Tiberius13]

If the only hard drive you have is that old 6.4gb drive, you are probably crippling an otherwise sweeeeeeet system. I can't even imagine how you have 2 partitions on a drive that small??

I would definitely recommend getting another hard drive to be your PRIMARY MASTER hard drive containing your operating system, etc. Get a 7200 rpm drive of any brand except IBM. An 8.5 seek time is just peachy. Pretty much all hard drives are the same with only minor performance or reliability differences. Most people get Maxtor or Western Digital these days I think.

Yes, you can have 2 partitions on your new hard drive (why though??) If you are using an FAT file system, I guess it may be useful, but if you are using NTFS, there probably is no reason to partition a drive under 40gb (personal preference I guess).

You should be able to set the old drive as slave to the new one, but make sure it doesn't affect the performance of the new drive (benchmark the new drive on it's own in the system, then benchmark it again after putting the old drive in as the slave).

That's enough to get your started.. I'm sure others will pitch to round out the suggestions.

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[unoc]

Don't worry !
You simply have to upgrade your system that is slowed by your old hard disk.
All hard disk drives actually on the market are three times, on average, faster then the yours. Buy the most convenient one from Western Digital, Maxtor or IBM, but be sure to buy the last model running at 7200 r.p.m. (the most convenient ones are in the range of 80 GBytes)
Put the new hdd as master on primary IDE. Leave the old one as master on the secondary IDE. I believe you also have a CD-ROM. You can put this unit as slave on the secondary IDE channel.
Now, do you also have a CD burner ? If yes you have to choice if connect this device on the secondary IDE channel or to change all the configuration. This because IDE interface can only read or write at the same time on the same channel. This means that it is not allowed to read from a CD and simultaneously write with the CD burner if both the device are on the same channel. The same for the HDD. The choice on how to connect the devices come from the answer to these questions: do you plan to make frequently CD copy "on the fly" ? Do you plan to move huge amount of data between the two HDD ?
Don't forget to install and adequate RAM (at least 256 MBytes) and to download the last drivers for your motherboard/controller.
Make your choice.

 

[lhgpoobaa]

oh god yes. definately a new drive.

i reccomend a maxtor D740X... in say the 40Gb capacity.
heaps of room, and super fast.

P.S. u may want to do a partition, 5-10Gb system, the rest for whatever.

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