[bunnyslayr]

I have been looking around for ages on Newegg for an affordable internal hard drive, which I need soon. Could someone point me in the right direction? What kind of HD specs do you think I need? How much storage? I'm an HD newb so bear with me...

My mother board is an ASRock M3A770DE AM3 AMD 770 ATX AMD .

Thank you!

[Rommel]

bunnyslayr, on 30 October 2011 - 05:15 PM, said:

I have been looking around for ages on Newegg for an affordable internal hard drive, which I need soon. Could someone point me in the right direction? What kind of HD specs do you think I need? How much storage? I'm an HD newb so bear with me...

My mother board is an ASRock M3A770DE AM3 AMD 770 ATX AMD .

Thank you!

7200 RPM

Sata 2

Sata 1 should work but less of a performer but for storage is not a problem.

Storage size? I don't know. What are you storing and how much of it?

HDDs are expensive now, Can you wait till the Thanksgiving weekend for possibly a black friday deal?

[LiveBrianD]

bunnyslayr, on 30 October 2011 - 05:15 PM, said:

I have been looking around for ages on Newegg for an affordable internal hard drive, which I need soon. Could someone point me in the right direction? What kind of HD specs do you think I need? How much storage? I'm an HD newb so bear with me...

My mother board is an ASRock M3A770DE AM3 AMD 770 ATX AMD .

Thank you!

Asrock isn't that great of a mobo brand in general, I'd look into ASUS, EVGA, Gigabyte, or MSI.

Anyway, there was a flooding Thailand recently, where Western Digital's factories are, so prices are much higher. I'd look into WD Blue or Black, a Samsung (the Spinpoint F3 has good ratings), or possibly a Seagate (not my favorite, but OK). Get a 3.5" one. It doesn't matter if it's SATA 3gb/s (sata 2) or SATA 6gb/s (Sata 3) - HDs barely saturate the sata 1.5gb/s bus!

[coastie65]

All Hdd prices seem to be on the rise for some reason. There is one thing that nags at me in that regard. I know that Emerson, Magnavox and one or two other electronics products are all made by Funai in China. Could be that may be the case for Hdds. Anyway, until the situation gets better as regarding the flooding, you will be hard pressed to find a cheap Hdd.

This post has been edited by coastie65: 31 October 2011 - 06:16 AM

[bunnyslayr]

Rommel, on 30 October 2011 - 05:43 PM, said:

bunnyslayr, on 30 October 2011 - 05:15 PM, said:

I have been looking around for ages on Newegg for an affordable internal hard drive, which I need soon. Could someone point me in the right direction? What kind of HD specs do you think I need? How much storage? I'm an HD newb so bear with me...

My mother board is an ASRock M3A770DE AM3 AMD 770 ATX AMD .

Thank you!

7200 RPM

Sata 2

Sata 1 should work but less of a performer but for storage is not a problem.

Storage size? I don't know. What are you storing and how much of it?

HDDs are expensive now, Can you wait till the Thanksgiving weekend for possibly a black friday deal?

No, sadly I can't :/ I may just get a small one now and get a bigger one then. I don't need to store much-just a little music and games. So maybe like a 250 gb will do for now? idk I'm not sure. I like the idea of black friday though.

LiveBrianD, on 30 October 2011 - 07:39 PM, said:

bunnyslayr, on 30 October 2011 - 05:15 PM, said:

I have been looking around for ages on Newegg for an affordable internal hard drive, which I need soon. Could someone point me in the right direction? What kind of HD specs do you think I need? How much storage? I'm an HD newb so bear with me...

My mother board is an ASRock M3A770DE AM3 AMD 770 ATX AMD .

Thank you!

Asrock isn't that great of a mobo brand in general, I'd look into ASUS, EVGA, Gigabyte, or MSI.

Anyway, there was a flooding Thailand recently, where Western Digital's factories are, so prices are much higher. I'd look into WD Blue or Black, a Samsung (the Spinpoint F3 has good ratings), or possibly a Seagate (not my favorite, but OK). Get a 3.5" one. It doesn't matter if it's SATA 3gb/s (sata 2) or SATA 6gb/s (Sata 3) - HDs barely saturate the sata 1.5gb/s bus!

I know, but this one got decent reviews on Newegg, and again, it's a budget PC.

And man, that sucks!! Oh well. It shouldn't take too long for the prices to go back down, should it?

[LiveBrianD]

Prices will come down in the middle of next year or so. A 250GB is probably okay.

[Rommel]

LiveBrianD, on 31 October 2011 - 02:34 PM, said:

Prices will come down in the middle of next year or so. A 250GB is probably okay.

http://www.bestbuy.c...3A%3E1900-01-01

Newegg can't beat these.

If there's a bestbuy near you this may be your best option.

What is your OS?
Who makes your PC?

Depending on same factors it may not automatically see all space available.
I never had to use this process but if it applies to you, I'm sure Brian can tell you what you might need to do.

[Ericzg2g]

the prices on HD's mightve went up a bit due to the natural disaster that happened over at the manufacturing factories (Thailand)
so it might be better if you wait out a little bit on HD's for now.

but if youre looking to invest in a upgarde for HD i would suggest you start looking for SSD's. its the way to go nowawdays.
http://www.maximumpc...181145#p1181145
its definitely more expensive for how little memory you get compared to regular 2TB SATA HD, but SSDs are worth it for their incredible load times.

definitely look into it!

[LiveBrianD]

Rommel, on 31 October 2011 - 03:29 PM, said:

LiveBrianD, on 31 October 2011 - 02:34 PM, said:

Prices will come down in the middle of next year or so. A 250GB is probably okay.

http://www.bestbuy.c...3A%3E1900-01-01

Newegg can't beat these.

If there's a bestbuy near you this may be your best option.

What is your OS?
Who makes your PC?

Depending on same factors it may not automatically see all space available.
I never had to use this process but if it applies to you, I'm sure Brian can tell you what you might need to do.

Typically those HDs come unformatted. If installing Windows from the DVD, setup will prompt you to install. If installing as a second drive in Windows, type start, diskmgmt.msc, and it'll prompt you to instalize the disk, and then you need to format it. If cloning, I think software like Easeus todo backup (which also does direct clones) can clone from a bigger to a smaller drive, as long as you have enough free space (ie. from a 750GB to a 500GB, with 250GB of data involved). Also, because HD manufacturers use 1KB=1000bytes and the OS uses 1KB=1024bytes, the formula to calculate the actual space is this:
spacetheosclaimsyouhave=(manufclaimedspace*1000*1000*1000)/(1024*1024*1024)
So a 320GB drive will appear as 298GB in the os. This is normal.

Shockingly enough, this is the one time I've seen Best Buy have the best price on something - those HDs are quite a bit cheaper there than at newegg.

In some cases, with prebuilts, you'll likely have a recovery partition eating about 15GB of space, and you can burn the recovery discs and then delete the partition to save space. (using disk management, then extend the main C: partition to use that extra space) Also, limiting the space System Restore can use will give you more disk space to use.

Alternatively, if that seems to complicated, you can just go all office space on the drive.

This post has been edited by LiveBrianD: 31 October 2011 - 05:00 PM

[coastie65]

Interestingly enough, This is what I paid TigerDirect ( Newegg didn't have them ) for for this: http://www.bestbuy.c...2&skuId=8909595 And the one I got was a bare drive. I went back and checked two days later and it was $139.99.

[LiveBrianD]

coastie65, on 31 October 2011 - 04:58 PM, said:

Interestingly enough, This is what I paid TigerDirect ( Newegg didn't have them ) for for this: http://www.bestbuy.c...2&skuId=8909595 And the one I got was a bare drive. I went back and checked two days later and it was $139.99.

Man, considering what's happened lately, those are pretty good prices. Let's just hope they don't find out about the flooding in Thailand. Do you guys think this will help sales of SSDs at all? Instead of getting a performance HD (like a WD Black), maybe getting a cheaper lower performance HD for data and an SSD for the OS? (after all, the price difference won't be as great)

[bunnyslayr]

Rommel, on 31 October 2011 - 03:29 PM, said:

LiveBrianD, on 31 October 2011 - 02:34 PM, said:

Prices will come down in the middle of next year or so. A 250GB is probably okay.

http://www.bestbuy.c...3A%3E1900-01-01

Newegg can't beat these.

If there's a bestbuy near you this may be your best option.

What is your OS?
Who makes your PC?

Depending on same factors it may not automatically see all space available.
I never had to use this process but if it applies to you, I'm sure Brian can tell you what you might need to do.

Wow, usually I hate Bestbuy because of their prices, but that's a good deal!! I'll probably go for the 500 gig on that page if you think that will be sufficient.

Yeah, there's one right across the road.

My OS will either be Windows 7 or XP (64 bit for both); I haven't decided yet. I will be dual-booting with Ubuntu.
I'm in the process of building my own computer.

[LiveBrianD]

500GB should be enough. My main drive is 640GB and it's enough (the secondary 500GB is only for VMs). Fyi, XP is getting really out of date, and its' 64-bit version never went mainstream and is not supported by a lot of programs. (I think IE7, MSE, Office 2010...) If you get Windows 7 (great option), get 64-bit - you won't regret it, everything supports it, and it'll allow you to get more than ~3GB RAM.

[Rommel]

bunnyslayr, on 01 November 2011 - 05:24 PM, said:

Wow, usually I hate Bestbuy because of their prices, but that's a good deal!! I'll probably go for the 500 gig on that page if you think that will be sufficient.

Yeah, there's one right across the road.

My OS will either be Windows 7 or XP (64 bit for both); I haven't decided yet. I will be dual-booting with Ubuntu.
I'm in the process of building my own computer.

How are you planning on setting up your dual boot?

[bunnyslayr]

Rommel, on 01 November 2011 - 05:55 PM, said:

bunnyslayr, on 01 November 2011 - 05:24 PM, said:

Wow, usually I hate Bestbuy because of their prices, but that's a good deal!! I'll probably go for the 500 gig on that page if you think that will be sufficient.

Yeah, there's one right across the road.

My OS will either be Windows 7 or XP (64 bit for both); I haven't decided yet. I will be dual-booting with Ubuntu.
I'm in the process of building my own computer.

How are you planning on setting up your dual boot?

I'm going to do it through Ubuntu when I install it after Windows. I already tried it on my current computer and it seems to work decently enough. I partitioned 30 GB for Ubuntu and it's running well.

LiveBrianD, on 01 November 2011 - 05:27 PM, said:

500GB should be enough. My main drive is 640GB and it's enough (the secondary 500GB is only for VMs). Fyi, XP is getting really out of date, and its' 64-bit version never went mainstream and is not supported by a lot of programs. (I think IE7, MSE, Office 2010...) If you get Windows 7 (great option), get 64-bit - you won't regret it, everything supports it, and it'll allow you to get more than ~3GB RAM.

Alright then. I'll get Windows 7 64 bit. Thank you!

[MACDROID84]

LiveBrianD, on 31 October 2011 - 02:34 PM, said:

Prices will come down in the middle of next year or so. A 250GB is probably okay.

Alternatively, if that seems to complicated, you can just go all office space on the drive.

.... This.

[MLStrand56]

bunnyslayr, on 30 October 2011 - 05:15 PM, said:

I have been looking around for ages on Newegg for an affordable internal hard drive. What kind of HD specs do you think I need? How much storage? I'm an HD newb so bear with me...

Well there's Cheap = Low Quality = Maxtor Or Cheap = Inexpensive = $50 for 1TB WD HD.

MLStrand56