External Harddrives

spwuinmk67

I don't know how many of you guys are that into computers, but I'm hoping enough to help me out here. My dad's got an older gateway which I was looking to get him an external harddrive, and possibly some more RAM for christmas. Anyone know maybe the best, or most reasonable, kind to get. Where would be the best place to get it as well? Thanks...

Jstas

Why do you want an external hard drive? It is usually cheaper and easier to get an internal one and install it. If you are deadset on an external hard drive, Maxtor, Western Digital and Seagate have ones that I have seen. They are all fairly pricey though. Anywhere from 200-600 depending on the size of teh drive.

As far as memory goes, Micron Technologies (aka: Crucial or just plain Micron) memory is the stuff I have had the most success with. Infact, I can't remember having a failure of any kind with Micron. It can usually be a bit more expensive than cheap stuff but it comes with an excellent warranty.

Some places to get good memory at good prices are crucial.com and bzboyz.com. Another place to pick up good memory is www.mushkin.com. They have good prices and a solid product.

spwuinmk67

Well I wasn't dead set on it, I figured it would've been easier to throw it on the desk, plug it in to the USB. I haven't opened his pc up in a long time, I'm not sure how much room he has left in there, and if I did get him an internal, would I just be able to add it on, or would I need to take his existing one out?

bobman1235

Originally posted by spwuinmk67
Well I wasn't dead set on it, I figured it would've been easier to throw it on the desk, plug it in to the USB. I haven't opened his pc up in a long time, I'm not sure how much room he has left in there, and if I did get him an internal, would I just be able to add it on, or would I need to take his existing one out?

Depends on what's in there. If he has an open bay and an open IDE channel you can just plug it in, but if you don't know what you're doing it would be kind of difficult.

OTOH, you're paying way more for an external, and not getting the performance you could get otherwise. Plus something else to make noise and clutter up the desk.

I'd seriously consider the internal.

spwuinmk67

Maybe the next time he's at work I'll open it up and take a look. As far as knowing what I'm doing, I've got a pretty good idea. Ive been taking apart computers, playing with them, putting some together, and what not since I was a little kid. Most of them didn't work in the first place, so if I messed something up it wasn't a big deal, his works and I'd like it to continue to work. I've just never installed a 2nd hard drive to add to one. I'd rather ask around then just go ahead and do it, and end up breaking something.

Jstas

If you want to install a second hard drive, you do not have to replace his old one. What you need to do though is take out his old one and make sure that it has it's jumper settings set to Master. If it is Cable Select, that is OK too but you need to make sure that you have a Cable Select IDE cable and that the second hard drive is daisychained off of that cable in the secondary HDD position on the cable.

Honestly, Master/Slave is an easier method for a novice to understand.

To install a second hard-drive, you'd have to make sure the original HD was set to Master on the jumper settings (most drives have labels on them describing how to do this) and the new one has it's jumper settings set to Slave.

At that point, hook your IDE cable and power cables up to the drivers and tight the screws down so they don't shift, move or vibrate excessivly. Turn the computer on and watch the boot prompt scroll by and test for the drives in the system. Make sure you see the secondary hard drive come up. The OS will boot and then recognize and install the drivers for the hard drive to work. You will then need to format and partition the drive and that can be very different depending on your OS.

It's relativly easy to do. As long as you don't change teh old HD with any command, you can always remove the new one and restore the computer to it's configuration before you started. Out of all the internal work you can do to a system, installing a secondary hard drive is one of the easiest things you can do.

spwuinmk67

Shouldn't be too difficult. Would you recomend the same brands for internal drives as well?

Jstas

I've been using Seagate Barracudas lately with no real problems that weren't cause by users. In other words, I haven't had a Seagate drive fail on me yet. I've used Western Digital with a fair amount of success too. Maxtors, Quantums and IBM Deskstars have all crapped out on me with in a short perior of time. I even had a Maxtor hard drive catch on fire once. I have no clue how or why but it seems to have shorted out and started smoking. The smoking just got worse and worse until I pulled the power cord out of the back of the computer.

Personally, I'd stick with Seagate or Western Digital. I have had the least number of problems with them.

Shizelbs

Seagate now offers 5 year warranties. I believe its the longest of all the major HD manufacturers.

Strong Bad

I built my own external HD a few months back. I purchased a USB HD case and a Seagate 160gb HD.

Here is the case that ran me $65.00 after rebates...

http://www.apricorn.com/product_details.php?ID=332


The Seagate drive (with 5 year warranty) wound up costing me $50.00 after rebates from Best Buy. It was one of those once in a blue moon deals.

So, for $115.00, I got a sweet external USB 160gb drive. The case is very nice as it has it's own cooling fan internally. Very well constructed out of aluminum. Putting it together and formatting it was a breeze. If you're looking to go external, think about this way. Look at going internal first though as others stated.

Seagate drives are tops on my list. Had some Western Digitals die on me. One lasted a year and another lasted 2 weeks. No more WD drives for me.


John