new hdd?

Krepticor · Post by **Krepticor** » Mon Jun 09, 2008 5:50 pm

I'm not talking storage, I mean partition, if one was to use sata for the partition, it just usually takes longer for XP to boot, some sata drive also do not boot correctly, but that said some ide don't boot correctly, I don't know everything, but I know sata is not ALWAYS the way to go, most of the time yes

If it were up to me I say SCSI (or scuzzy for the lamens) but that is expensive and really power hungry, not to mention the main application is in servers, and well those are iffy themselves, the nature of the beast is that nothing is 100% the way to go, everything has its weaknesses and its overwhelming strengths, and well popularity in the manufacturing plant usually prevails, not to mentions select individuals and companies

I mainly said this since the IDE stuff is getting cheaper by the day and for an XP application, they still are a favorite of mine

samus · Post by **samus** » Mon Jun 09, 2008 7:25 pm

i kinda dual boot ubuntu 7.10 and xp. btw.

that was REALLY helpful bicostp. i'll be using the diagram..

i was talking to someone at my old job today and he said that you can't do slave and master drive with sata unless you have something called "raid". is he blowing smoke out of his ass, or is there some truth to this?

Post by **bicostp** » Mon Jun 09, 2008 7:38 pm

Basically RAID is a complicated way to make multiple hard drives look like one to the OS. RAID setups can boost capacity, performance, or reliability, and each scheme comes with a significant drawback. You don't have to worry about that if you just want some more digital elbow room.

And you don't have to worry about master/slave configuration on SATA, either. Each drive gets its own cable and its own port and the motherboard or SATA controller takes care of the rest. Just plug the new drive in and go.

Electric Rain · Post by **Electric Rain** » Mon Jun 09, 2008 7:50 pm

bicostp wrote:Basically RAID is a complicated way to make multiple hard drives look like one to the OS. RAID setups can boost capacity, performance, or reliability, and each scheme comes with a significant drawback. You don't have to worry about that if you just want some more digital elbow room.

And you don't have to worry about master/slave configuration on SATA, either. Each drive gets its own cable and its own port and the motherboard or SATA controller takes care of the rest. Just plug the new drive in and go.

^^^ That. ^^^

samus · Post by **samus** » Mon Jun 09, 2008 8:44 pm

awesome, i have no more questions right now.

i'm going to stop putting things on my computer for awhile while i shop around on newegg.

thanks.

Bibin · Post by **Bibin** » Tue Jun 10, 2008 5:08 pm

If you decide to get an external, DO NOT GET A USB DRIVE. In case you are about to, USB is a very slow interface, even USB 2.0.

Get firewire or eSata.

Electric Rain · Post by **Electric Rain** » Tue Jun 10, 2008 5:25 pm

Well, of course. eSATA is the best option for an external drive... if your computer has it. But ATM, only the better motherboards (not stock) have eSATA ports.

Technically, the slowest version of Firewire (400Mbit/s) is slower than USB 2.0 (480Mbit/s).

lifeisbetterwithketchup · Tue Jun 10, 2008 11:07 pm

Electric Rain wrote:Technically, the slowest version of Firewire (400Mbit/s) is slower than USB 2.0 (480Mbit/s).

Key word being "technically". In practice, Firewire is much faster than USB 2.0.

Electric Rain · Post by **Electric Rain** » Wed Jun 11, 2008 12:34 am

Yeah, that used to confuse me, because a while back, I was taking some kind of test that asked you to put, in order, which is fastest out of USB 1.1, USB 2.0, Firewire and I think serial and... something else. Anyway, I got that question wrong, because I said Firewire was faster than USB 2.0, and sure enough, the friggin' college textbook I was supposed to refer to, also said that USB 2.0 was faster than Firewire.

Whatever. I knew I was right then, and I'm still right. Stupid textbook...

grossaffe · Post by **grossaffe** » Wed Jun 11, 2008 12:41 am

Electric Rain wrote:Yeah, that used to confuse me, because a while back, I was taking some kind of test that asked you to put, in order, which is fastest out of USB 1.1, USB 2.0, Firewire and I think serial and... something else. Anyway, I got that question wrong, because I said Firewire was faster than USB 2.0, and sure enough, the friggin' college textbook I was supposed to refer to, also said that USB 2.0 was faster than Firewire.

Whatever. I knew I was right then, and I'm still right. Stupid textbook...

yeah, I was taught in my Comp Sys Tech class that USB 2.0 is faster than firewire. we were given different speeds, and USB 2.0 was in MBps while firewire was in Mbps

Post by **Sparkfist** » Thu Jun 12, 2008 5:31 am

Guys you have to keep in mind that there are situations where Firewire will perform slower then USB 2.0. They're two completely different interfaces. One weakness of that interface on Firewire's side is that it can not be connected to a hub like USB, and I haven't seen a suitable way to daisy-chain them. Also while I understand that most of the time Firewire would be faster, most computers don't have it, and now that Apple has dropped it it's dying.

I use multiple USB hard drive, they perform fine. The only time I get any noticeable lag is when I'm trying to view PDF files, but those things are huge sometimes.

Also to clearify something, I have WoW running on one of my hard drives. It was compiled via Linux, it's running on Windows without being in the registry. I would take that hard drive go to a friends and use it there. Doesn't matter. The only thing that might complain is when I start up WoW it will say "Hardware change
Change settings to default?"
Which isn't an issue to say "No" to.

samus · Post by **samus** » Thu Jun 19, 2008 5:24 pm

so it turns out i never use ubuntu on the other partition of my hdd so i downloaded partition magic, deleted the partition, and resized the current one i'm using and now i have about 35gigs free. turns out i don't need to buy another hdd. but i did learn a lot.

but now i have another question...

whenever i boot up my computer the dell screen comes up and the loading bar goes about half way and stops. is this a problem with my bios? i've found ways to get around it like putting something in the cd/dvd drive or turning it off and waiting 30 seconds. but it gets annoying, you know?

Post by **bicostp** » Thu Jun 19, 2008 8:07 pm

The load bar on the Dell BIOS screen, or the blocky load bar that comes up between the BIOS and Windows logo screens?

If it's the BIOS load bar, it could be a memory issue.

Does the problem go away if you disconnect your hard drive or take one of the RAM sticks out?

samus · Post by **samus** » Fri Jun 20, 2008 7:36 pm

well i didn't take into account the grub loader and had to completely reinstall a new os... i feel like a giant retard... but the loading bar problem disappeared and i'm hiding in the corner embarrassed and semi-pissed-off. just ignore that question, thanks anyway bicostp.

Post by **Sparkfist** » Fri Jun 20, 2008 8:49 pm

samus wrote:well i didn't take into account the grub loader and had to completely reinstall a new os... i feel like a giant retard... but the loading bar problem disappeared and i'm hiding in the corner embarrassed and semi-pissed-off. just ignore that question, thanks anyway bicostp.

Next time you can just reinstall the bootloader. If you're running Windows, repair, simple enough.

If you want to keep grub, it's just as easy if you're running Linux.... on Windows, I don't have a clue.