I think my home computer hard drive is on its last legs. Any recommendations for a replacement and where to get it?
Can someone explain the diff. interfaces? (SATA vs. IDE) How do I know which one I can/should use?
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I think my home computer hard drive is on its last legs. Any recommendations for a replacement and where to get it?
Can someone explain the diff. interfaces? (SATA vs. IDE) How do I know which one I can/should use?
Depends on what your sytem can support. SATA is new in the home pc moarket and unless you bought the computer in the last year or so I doubt you have sata capabilities.Quote:
Originally Posted by sammm
Look at the cables that connect the drives to the system board. If it is 2 rows of pins in a flat connector it is IDE. The sata drives use a much smaller cable.
The drives are now labeled "PATA" and "SATA"... Parallel ATA and Serial ATA.
If your cable has a standard 40 pin connector with a wide ribbon cable then you want to buy a PATA drive. The SATA connector is about 3/4" wide. It's tiny.
You can get a PATA to SATA converter or a SATA PCI card for your computer if you want to put in one of the newer type drives.
If your hard drive goes south you can always try putting it in the freezer for a few hours to try and get your data back.
RJ
:confused: Wha??Quote:
Originally Posted by channelmaniac
Yes it works, at work we regurally sandwich failing laptop drives between two cans of cold soda to get the last bits of data off before complete failure. (We don't have a fridge, but we are right next to a breakroom stocked with free drinks.) The reason we don't stick it in the cooler is we don't want it walking off and condensation on the board could be an issue.
Samm, if you take RJ up on the freezer idea, you might want to put it in a zip lock bag first.
It's not dead yet and I do have an external back-up drive it's all backed-up to. Looking at newegg's site, I see ATA100 and ATA133. Can I use either? My PC is a little over 2 years old. The invoice states 'Serial ATA Hard Drive (7200 RPM)' if that helps.
Now to answer your first question, other than the difference in plugs/interfaces the main difference between PATA/IDE and SATA is speed.
IDE usually runs at either 66 MB/s or 100 MB/s or 133 MB/s where as SATA runs at 1.5 Gb/s and the newer one carries 3 Gb/s.
Here are a couple pretty decent articles on the technologies.
PATA/IDE Linke
SATA Linke
Sounds like a typo somewhere, see my last post above.Quote:
Originally Posted by sammm
If you have SATA then your MOBO will more than likely have IDE as well. But I would just put in what I took out
Sata Cable
http://sierra-cables.com/SATA/Images...al-Cable-1.jpg
IDE Cable
http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/.../cable-ide.jpg
Yup... it's true!Quote:
Originally Posted by POS Racing
Be sure and take proper precautions when getting rid of the old one.
BFH?Quote:
Originally Posted by Majik
Sock it before you soak it?Quote:
Originally Posted by Majik
I would guess anything that keeps the plates from being read. A big hammer could be fun, Ill let the experts tell us if that works or not...Quote:
Originally Posted by sammm
More fun to disassemble and make wall clocks.Quote:
Originally Posted by Majik
According to our policy at Alcatel, all hard drives had to be put in to an industrial shredder that guaranteed no pieces bigger than 0.1" in diameter..... it was fun to see them do a rack at a time...Quote:
Originally Posted by Majik
Are there any utilities (freeware/shareware) that will allow me to clone my old drive to my new drive? If so, what are they?
Yes.Quote:
Originally Posted by sammm
:clap:Quote:
Originally Posted by tailchaser
Man you just can't get any better help than you can at this place! ::Banana::