OT for Mark B Mi.

Hey Mark, I want to slave a larger hard drive behind my 40G unit. I'm thinking 250-500, something like that. I'm still running an older 32 bit processor so anything bigger is a waste I'm told. I've looked all over and I'm entirely confused. Can you recommend a decent brand, or brand and model, to look for?

FWIW- I owe you a big thank you for recently pushing me into learning more about these blasted machines! I'm looking into building one myself so I understand them better. It's still pretty confusing reading the various websites since I don't game or do anything too strenuous though. And I don't need lightening fast anything since our line speed is pretty slow no matter what. But I did want to put that thank you out there.

Hi Bret,

Well, just because you have a 32 bit machine doesn't mean you can't run a big hard drive. The limitation is the operating system, not the processor. If you're running Windows XP, you should have no problem with a 1 or 2 TB drive. And there are ways to use a larger drive than the OS supports, but I won't get into that.

The first thing you need to consider is what kind of interface your computer supports. Up until about ten years ago, most PCs used what was called IDE or ATA. This older standard used a flat cable about two inches wide. It is a parallel interface and is now referred to as "PATA" for "Parallel ATA". PATA has been replaced by a serial interface called "SATA". This has a cable that's about 3/8 of an inch wide. If your computer uses PATA, you'll find your choices are somewhat limited, since pretty much everthing today is SATA.

As for disk drive brands, I've had good luck with Hitachi and Seagate. But, frankly, I haven't had a lot of experience with other brands.

The latest thing are SSDs: Solid State Drives. This have no mechanical components; they're actually memory devices. They're expensive for their capacity, but VERY fast.

You are quite welcome, by the way. Glad to help.

I'm running Win 7 Home Basic. I believe I have the older wiring hookup.

There are PCI-E to SATA interface cards which will allow you to put a SATA drive in a PC that only supports PATA. But if your PC is that old you're pretty close to end-of-life. If it came with Windows 7 installed, it most likely is set up for SATA.

I didn't have a chance to dig this up early, but here's a fairly unbiased evaluation of hard disk failure rate by a company that hosts cloud storage. Their experience indicates that HGST (formerly Hitachi) drives are well ahead of WD and Seagate with respect to reliability.
Hard Disk Reliability

Bret, I'm running window 7 on a dell laptop. I
just purchased an external 1 TB WD passport hard
drive from Target for $70. I know very little
about computers, however I have a Son and SIL who
are MS certified administrator, both PS and Mac.
My son set it up for me Saturday. He said this
will be all I need.

There are probably better deals out there, but I
wanted to get it done when I went to Indy to see
my boy.

He also recommended putting it in a shock
absorbing case of some kind and avoiding moving
it when it's on.
george

You are right about my old dell laptop nearing the end of life. That is why I wanted an external hard drive, so when computer dies or windows 7 no longer is supported by MS, I will have all the documents and pics to transfer to another computer.

George, I've got 4 of them. I use 3 strictly for memory storage - 1 I always have hooked to my laptop, the other 2 are what I put my "Backups" on. The 4th one is strictly for FULL SYSTEM BACKUP.


:>)

Bret, if it turns out you have an IDE interface, finding a drive
might take some doing as Mark said. I'll have to go look, but I
think I have a good used 250Gb IDE drive.
If I do you can have it for the shipping cost.
I'm sure it would fit in a small flat rate box for about $6.

Dr. Walt,
My son calls me amish because I have two old computers. One he made for me when he was in High School. It has windows 95. I love the old spreadsheet program. I still use it for my business records. It has a 3 1/2 drive which I use to back up my records and transfer them to my other outdated windows xp computer which my boy made 11 years ago. That computer still has a good office copy/scanner/fax. I back up my business records on that computer too. No worry about either computer getting a virus, they are not connected to internet.

I was out of town for a few weeks. Spent over 3 hours cleaning off the pile of mail and things I had to put in the old office computer. I use spreadsheet as my check book. Made a few simple equations and it very easy to balance check book. End of year means I need to start a new spreadsheet for business records. Sort, total, and send 2014 records to CPA.

I keep my pics on laptops.

Thanks to all. I have the older PATA interface and have been doing a bit of You Tubing and finding out about adapters and what not. The 'puter is older but still solid. Just has a fairly small HD and since I've had 3 crash in the past year, I wanted to get ahead and start transferring data to a larger, new one. I'm eyeballing kits right now and considering putting one together to get a better feel for what is what.

Thanks again to all.