Tempted to spend gift money on 1TB hard drive

Tek7

Tek7

CGA President, Tribe of Judah Founder & President
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I'm thinking of spending some of the gift money I've saved up on a new 1TB hard drive. I was thinking specifically of the Western Digital Caviar Green WD10EADS 1TB 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive - OEM. There's a coupon code (EMCLVMR33) that knocks another $10 off the price, bringing it to $80 shipped.

I remember Hescominsoon commenting that one would be well-advised to wait until hardware manufacturers work out the kinks in hard drives with more than 500GB storage capacity, but the reviews on the drive are impressive and the price seems good.

Thoughts?

EDIT: I also need to make sure the hard drive will work in my system. I already have two IDE hard drive, a DVD burner, and a CD burner (separate from the DVD burner) installed. My mainboard is an Epox EP-8KRAIPRO. It should work as long as I can find space in the case, right?

EDIT: The SAMSUNG Spinpoint F1 HD103UJ 1TB SATA 7200 RPM 32MB Buffer Hard Drive also looks good and is $75 shipped after rebate.

EDIT: Fixed link to mainboard product page.
 
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DUN DO IT!

I has no reasoning behind it, but just sayin'. :p Buy a new GPU instead. >_>
 
One of my friends gave me a link to an article engadget did about HD size.

It ultimately said that 1tb isnt a problem as the heads in the drives are constantly progressing to keep in line with the density of the drive.
 
you also have to consider how much wattage your power supply is rated to spit out at any given time. With 2 IDE drives, a CD ROm and all the other odds an ends, you could be right up near the limit if you have a lower wattage PSU.

The other issue is the connection. The SATA drives use a different connector than IDE. I wasn't able to follow that link to your MOBO, but you'll want to make sure that you can USE a SATA drive internally.

sata2.jpg
versus
p-IDE.jpg


If you're interested in getting the drive (and don't mind a slight latency in data access that comes from going over a USB line) and don't have the SATA connection or the PSU wattage available, then you can use an External HDD Enclosure, such as http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817707153

Couple of things there, that's for a SATA drive, if you want an IDE drive you'll need to search specifically for that type of external enclosure. Also, you'll want to make sure that the enclosure you get has a POWER ADAPTER, otherwise you're pulling power over the USB, and you'll still run into power issues with your power supply.
 
Any energy star rated disk will consume less then 7w idle. Figure a maximum of 20w and it isn't really that much.

The biggest issue IMO is keeping the drives cool. For instance the old IBM deathstars, er deskstar, were perfectly stable so long as they did not get hot. Unfortunately most of the cases have horrible airflow around there, and as such people are literally throwing their data into a fire.

Another good option is to build a NAS. It will cost a little bit more, but the advantage being you don't need your desktop to be on 24/7 to access files. Plus you can do things like bittorrent, sharing music via UPnP or iTunes, etc. You need to get a gigabit switch to make the most of it, otherwise you will be limited to 12MB/sec or so for reads.
 
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Kidan said:
The other issue is the connection. The SATA drives use a different connector than IDE. I wasn't able to follow that link to your MOBO, but you'll want to make sure that you can USE a SATA drive internally.
Click to expand...
D'oh. I fixed the link in my original post. Here it is again for easy reference.

My PSU has cables for SATA power and my mainboard also supports SATA connections, so I'm good to go. My only concern now is having enough space in the drive carriages.
 
Odale said:
One of my friends gave me a link to an article engadget did about HD size.

It ultimately said that 1tb isnt a problem as the heads in the drives are constantly progressing to keep in line with the density of the drive.
Click to expand...

engadget is incorrect. The density of the drives is the actual problem. Due to the desnity being so high there are issues with these high density disks. I have posted about this earlier..do a search for it.
 
The only thing I noticed is that your mobo doesn't support SATA 3.0Gb/s only 1.5Gb/s. It should be compatible but your speed being lower on a 1 TB drive could be an issue.
 
sata 1.5 is 1.5 gigaBITS(small b) per second which is 192 megsabytes a sec which that drive never gets close to.
 
After reading a few forum posts from users with the same motherboard (Epox 8KRAIPRO), I'm wondering if it will work to mix IDE and SATA drives.

Anyone know of any issues with or precautions to take before installing both types of drives in the same system?
 
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as long as your mobo drivers are updated you should be fine IF the sata controllers were already turned on when you installed windows. If not turn them on and put them into legacy or ide mode or you willl most likely crash your box.
 
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