Used to be Hints n Tips - advice needed on fitting a hard drive.....

[badger]

Not sure where to put this post, admin feel free to move.
I am looking to fit an extra hard drive into my home PC, running vista, and i would like the extra drive to act as extra storage for photos videos, music etc. I have had a look on the internet and picked up some advice but further advice on pitfalls what to look out for etc would be greatly appreciated.
thanks badger

[MadDogMcQ]

It's fairly straight forward, but can i suggest that you consider a portable USB Hard Drive to store your photos and such?  MUCH more practical and easy to move around (literally).

[MadDogMcQ]

http://www.google.co.uk/products/catalog?hl=en&cp=14&gs_id=d&xhr=t&q=portable+usb+hard+drive&safe=off&qscrl=1&nord=1&rlz=1T4GGLL_en-GBGB372GB372&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.,cf.osb&ion=1&biw=1920&bih=953&wrapid=tljp1339621912661024&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=shop&cid=4131508716993729235&sa=X&ei=6gHZT-KfBqnC0QW51LWfBA&sqi=2&ved=0CNABEPMCMAM


  £33

[Grahamm]

If your system can handle SATA, I'd consider getting an OCZ Solid State Drive, installing your OS onto that and then turning your whole existing drive over to storage.

It'll also give you faster boot times

[Buzz]

2TB drive in Curry's for £90...bargain. 


Microsoft also do a very good "sync" tool which mirrors folders on your PC and External drive, perfect for backing up photos/music etc.  Get it here

[MadDogMcQ]

And why not dump that nasty Vista and move to Win7 while you're at it?

[Lawrence]

If your system can handle SATA, I'd consider getting an OCZ Solid State Drive, installing your OS onto that and then turning your whole existing drive over to storage.

It'll also give you faster boot times

Much faster than a traditional hard disk, but would personally go for Crucial M4.  Had lots of OCZ Vertex 2 drives (which I realise are old now) and had lots of failures and incompatibilities with various machines.  M4s have been goos as gold.

[badger]

Thanks for all the tips and advice. The PC is a few years old now but running ok for what i need from it. I just needed some more cheap storage space to keep me going until i'm ready to replace the pc completely. had also seen this one:
http://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/seagate-freeagent-goflex-ultra-portable-hard-drive-320gb-06824073-pdt.html?intcmpid=display~RR~Computing+Accessories~06824073
 

[Grahamm]

Much faster than a traditional hard disk, but would personally go for Crucial M4.  Had lots of OCZ Vertex 2 drives (which I realise are old now) and had lots of failures and incompatibilities with various machines. 

I looked into this carefully, the series 3 drives appear to have had the bugs sorted out.

The only annoying thing is that I found the motherboard I bought only supported SATA 2, not SATA 3  so it's not as fast on booting as it could be

[goldfazer]

Don't go solid state - I did, it's great but needs a lot of techy fiddling to work properly. and not THAT much faster sadly.

[Grahamm]

Don't go solid state - I did, it's great but needs a lot of techy fiddling to work properly. and not THAT much faster sadly.

Err, plug in the SATA drive, check the BIOS recognises it, use it like any other HDD.

No problem.

[goldfazer]

Err, nope. Well maybe. But if it works reliably, it WILL need some tweaks to get it running at a decent speed, otherwise it will be dog slow. But I guess if you haven't run the tests/diagnostics cos you didn't think they were needed, you wouldn't know that

[Grahamm]

There's a difference between "working properly" and playing around with settings to (possibly) get faster performance which may, in itself, have drawbacks eg write-caching which is fine until you get a power glitch as it's half-way through writing.

You can also switch to AHCI (if it's not already set up), but you have to be confident with playing around with the Registry and even then not all drives show a noticable improvement.

But I'm sure you already knew that.

[goldfazer]

If it's not optimised, there ain't any point in having it - you're wasting money!

'But I'm sure you already knew that.'

Yes. But I do IT for a living. Badger asked for basic advice which implies he's not that familiar with the workings of a PC. Let's not get into a 'My PC is bigger than your's'.

Having had an optimised SDD for about a year, I probably wouldn't bother again unless they were cheap (got this one half price, but still more than a HDD which was working fine anyway), and mine gets a lot of use.

[badger]

If it's not optimised, there ain't any point in having it - you're wasting money!

'But I'm sure you already knew that.'

Yes. But I do IT for a living. Badger asked for basic advice which implies he's not that familiar with the workings of a PC. Let's not get into a 'My PC is bigger than your's'.

Having had an optimised SDD for about a year, I probably wouldn't bother again unless they were cheap (got this one half price, but still more than a HDD which was working fine anyway), and mine gets a lot of use.

Goldfazer - yup my PC knowledge is limited, thats why I asked.i am competent enough to install an additional hard drive with a little bit of instruction. I didn't want to start WW3, but just ask if there were any pitfalls to look out for? My PC is 5 years old but still runs and performs OK and is adequate for what i use it for, I have nearly filled my hard drive and want some extra cheapish storage until i'm ready for a new pc / laptop. I dont really want to spend £80ish for a 1TB HD so looked at putting in an internal drive for between 20 40 quid.
Badger

[goldfazer]

Just adding an extra HDD is just a plug it in and maybe visit the BIOS/Setup page so it finds the new drive. You'll probably need to format it too (I would anyway, choose FAT32) from within Windoze. It's almost certainly a SATA drive, but you'd need to check (different cables 'n' stuff!).

[badger]

Nice one, thank you