TheVille

Ok so I'm not very knowledgable when it comes to computers. But hey I'm tryin to learn. Anyways to the point. I am in desper...DESPERATE need of a new HD. My current one isnt even a full 20 gigs with no partition . aaaand I'm finally thinkin of gettin the orange box for pc instead of 360 as i originally thought. So basically I need you to fill in the blanks for me.

Is it actually called a harddrive or motherboard? (heard my friend reffer to it as that)

Where can I find good quality ones for pretty cheap? ( the obvious one that everyone asks)

Anyone have any reccommendations for a HD?

**EDIT**
Just to let ppl know what type of RIG I have, if u wanna know anything else ask away:
Dell Dimension 4400 (it was a gift, I wanted to build one *not complaining*)
I have some extra RAM in it and a FX 5500 Nvidia vid card and a different dvd/cd-rom than factory standard.

It's a Hard drive disk (or HDD). The motherboard is the big big green board that you see on the inside of your computer. Its what bridges every aspect of your computer together. As for where you can find good quality ones for cheap? Try www.tigerdirect.com I do belive they ship to the US (i know they do to canada atleast X_X) But, they're a good site

Do they come in Zebibytes? *just kidding*

I dont think I get the joke...

lol... Any idea how big of a hard drive that would be?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_ ... %28data%29

o.O

very... very... big...

1 zebibyte is 1,180,591,620,717,411,303,42 bytes

a kilobyte being 1024 bytes.

now the average hard drive being anywhere from 20 to a few hundred GB

1 Zebibyte is 1 099 511 627 776 GB o.o

so.. no, they dont come in zebibytes lol

Remember these? We used to have em in the university computer room back when I were a lad.

http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/dasd/G ... _Jul75.pdf

280 MB in a box the size of two washer/dryer pairs! What's not to love?

And let's not forget those 5 MB drives for the Apple ][ and ///. Major advance!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ProFile

Aaanyway...what i usually do when upgrading drives that are working ok, is put the new drive in a USB box, format it, copy the old drive to it (not clone, that usually formats the new drive to the same size as the old), then swap the new drive for the old. You now have an external USB drive as a bonus. Those enclosures are quite cheap and nice to have around. Remember to use file transfer software for the copying, drag-and-drop doesn't do the trick on all the system files and stuff.

How big of a drive do you need? Check out this page for a good selection of drives. On the left you can choose your desired capacity or price range.

For transferring your data, I'd recommend Acronis True Image. It will clone and resize your partition to the new disk, so you won't need to reinstall anything.
http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/pr ... trueimage/

[quote="shimmybot";p="102683"]It's a Hard drive disk (or HDD). The motherboard is the big big green board that you see on the inside of your computer. Its what bridges every aspect of your computer together. As for where you can find good quality ones for cheap? Try www.tigerdirect.com I do belive they ship to the US (i know they do to canada atleast X_X) But, they're a good site[/quote]


ncix.com is another great site for parts.....I mod xbox's and get all my hdd's from the clearance section......really good deals

1. What type of hard drive do you have unused connectors for on your motherboard: pata/ide or sata?

2. What type of power connectors do you have extra from your power supply that will reach your empty 3.5 internal drive bays: molex (4-pin usually white connector) or sata (flat and black)?

Answering these two foundational questions will make it much easier for you to purchase and install a second harddrive for your computer.

[quote="MorbidJunkie";p="102740"][quote="shimmybot";p="102683"]It's a Hard drive disk (or HDD). The motherboard is the big big green board that you see on the inside of your computer. Its what bridges every aspect of your computer together. As for where you can find good quality ones for cheap? Try www.tigerdirect.com I do belive they ship to the US (i know they do to canada atleast X_X) But, they're a good site[/quote]


ncix.com is another great site for parts.....I mod xbox's and get all my hdd's from the clearance section......really good deals[/quote]

ncixus has spotty pricing and rather expensive shipping though. :-/

you may have already done this....


but, If your drive is only 20 MB.. make sure your graphics card can run directX ersrions needed for TF2 and the like.


Mine wasn't near as old as your compy sounds.. and i had to upgrade to get Episode 1, TF2 and portal.... a double check on your ram might be good too

I took a look at the official diagram of your motherboard (or System Board they call it), which is available here

The interface it uses is IDE. When shopping for a harddrive, make sure you find one that says "IDE" on it, and not "SATA," as SATA is a different connector that will not work.

As far as how big you need, that's a very subjective thing. It depends on what all you want to do with it. If you don't want to mess with partitioning, and were doing ok with 20GB until now, an 80GB hard drive will work (older OS's need partitions above 80GB). If you don't mind doing partitions, or want lots of storage space, go ahead and toss in a 750GB drive. The price has come down massively, and they are a bargain these days (probably the best GB to price ratio of any, at the moment).

For speed, 7200RPM. It's the standard for active drives, and is inexpensive. 5400RPM drives are a bit slow to respond for everyday purposes, and 10000RPM drives are expensive.

When it comes to brand, everybody has a favorite. My personal trusted brand is Western Digital - when I was in PC tech classes, my hardware instructor swore by them, and they've never done me wrong. I've known others who were long-time devotees of Seagate and Maxtor brands as well.

A couple examples:

80GB quick fix

750GB monster

There are many options in between, of course, depending on your budget and your goals for the system.

Just looked. you card in the only one that runs DirectX9 in it's class you lucky duck :)http://www.nvidia.com/page/fx_5200.html

Quick correction, I have a FX 5500 not 5200 (I made the edit up top)

Also my main goal is to get a big enough HD so I can actually have more than one game installed at any given time. My pc at this point may as well not be connected to the net. I have no media to speak of, only one game installed and the bare necessities of what I need. AAAAAND I all I have is 7.51 gigs left of space.

So I'm lookin to get a 500gig or bigger(or a big as I can get) within the price range of maybe 110 MAX (+S&H) or below.

As for some of those other specs on my computer If they are still needed Ill have to go find out.

**EDIT**
Almost forgot, back when I was browsing around the two brandnames I was looking at or was reccommended were western digital and seagate.

And I just looked over at something with my processor, would it be good enough? I have an Intel Pentium 4 1.60GHz. According to what I read I need a 1.70GHz