Newbie - How hard would this HD Install be??

C

calpolyarc

New Member
My mobo has SATA and RAID (P4C800-E Deluxe) capabilities but I don't know jack about them. I'm running out of space so I need a new hd and figured I might as well use the SATA and RAID technology since I have it...

My existing hd is a Barracuda 7200.7 and the new one I'd like to get is a Barracuda 7200.8

My question is how difficult is it to set all this up. I'm a newbie but I can follow instructions and I've installed my own mobo, dvd drives, and a loooong time ago a hard drive on my own. I don't want this to become one of those times where I think it should be done in 2 hours and 3 days later my computer is still not working :D

Thanks!
 
It shouldn't be much more than just sticking the drive in there and connecting it. I don't beleive you need to worry about jumper settings if the driver's SATA. If it's not SATA, you'll have to set it to Master or Slave. Pretty easy, though...
 
You can only RAID them if there both SATA drives, since your mobo doesnt support IDE RAID.

As the other one said, if its SATA all you need to do is plug it in and go, if its IDE you need to set it to slave.
 
calpolyarc said:
Is it worth $10 to get PATA instead of SATA ??
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SATA is faster than IDE, and overall its basically better. The only time it would be worth more in your case would be if you wanted to RAID it, but you would also need a RAID controller.

So go with the SATA.
 
Installing connecting the drive should be a no-brainer. Setting up RAID will be a little more involved. You might want to think about what type of RAID you want or if you want it at all.

You can only RAID them if there both SATA drives, since your mobo doesnt support IDE RAID.
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Not true. That board supports both PATA-133 and SATA RAID and is supposed to work with any combination of the 4 ports.
 
Anybody see a problem arising from using a Seagate 7200.7 as my master and a 7200.8 or .9 as the slave? Like is the SATA setup only going to be as good as my worst HD or anything like that? Thanks.
 
No problems, although typically people use their best HDD as the main drive, which makes for faster loading times, and the older drive as a secondary drive, where the performance hit will not be so significant.

In your case, though, the hard drives aren't that dissimlar, and you'd probably be hard pressed to notice any performance increase from using the new drive as the primary master
 
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