Newbie hard drive question

JSquier

JSquier

New Member
Okay, I am wanting to get a 300gig hd. I don't know the difference between SATA, EIDE and RAID. I use EIDE now, but do I want to go to SATA? If so, is it RAID configuration or something entirly different? I only want to buy one drive so I can partition 20 gig off it for windows and the rest for storage, but I want 16mb cache...I think :) I'm confused.
 
you should buy SATA as it is faster than EIDE, also RAID wont be available to you as you are only using one drive, i think. and the performance boost of raid is not that great so it is not worth buying 2 or more drives. also make sure your motherboard supports SATA. and yes a 16MB cache would be the best to go for.
 
If you have SATA II get that one, if you have SATA 150, then theres no point in spending more if your not going to benefit from it.
 
Now im debating between 2 hard drives:

Western Digital SATAII 250GB 16MB for $110
-or-
Maxtor DiamondMax SATA150 300GB 16MB for $120.
 
If you want the newest and fastest technology SATAII would be the way to go, but you also want to make sure that your SATA channels on the motherboard are compatible with SATAII. SATAII high as twice the burst rate compared to SATA150. If you need space and not so much performance the 300GB SATA150 would be fine. Both of these haed drives comes with a 3 year manufactors warranty.
 
Im thinking of going with the 300GB SATA150, since reviews for the SATAII say that there are problems with those hard drives and motherboard with the nForce 4 Ultra chipset. As i remember, the speeds havent reached SATA150 so i think it will be fine.
 
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