Hard Drive Question

[Needalittleinfo]

I'm looking to get a new hard drive for my comp and I was looking at some of the descriptions of them and they have the 200g which is how big then is has like 2mb and oem only. What does the OEM only mean and what is the 2 mb for?

[crossedup]

The 2 MB is the cache memory on the drive itself, the more you can get, the better the performance.

OEM is just the drive, no software, no box, no support, no cables, no screws. Drive only.

Make sure your motherboard BIOS can support a 200GB drive before you get one. Older ones topped out at 132GB w/o a BIOS upgrade.

[roley]

There are several options available to you with HDDs and they cover brand, size and speed.

The best performing drives are listed on www.storagereview.com

Brands: Western Digital, Maxtor, Seagate, Hitachi, Samsung....

Sizes: Up to 300GB in the 7200rpm range & up to 74GB in the 10,000rpm RAPTOR range

Speed: 7200rpm & 10,000rpm

===

I have seen on Storagereview that the Hitachi won a performance award, displacing the traditional leader Western Digital. But the RAPTOR is the fastest in the SATA range.

If you have a SATA interface on your computer, you could get a RAPTOR drive, ideally in addition to a larger capacity 7200rpm drive.

I have used Seagate and Western Digital, but not the others...but I can say, that in my opinion WD is making very good drives, particularly the RAPTOR which is really fast. I have built 2 systems with raptors and they work a dream (although you learn to take it for granted fast too!)

I'd recommend Western Digital for SATA/ATA drives and Maxtor for SCSI.

Roley
Black Frog Technologies

[roley]

crossedup mentioned that you need to have a mobo capable of supporting 48-bit addressing, otherwise you will require a special add on card to do the job.

If you do have this capability you may also have an issue in that WinXP may not have the right version of one of its driver files.

You can search this forum for it...type in 48-bit addressing or something and you should find something i posted earlier with links to microsoft etc

Roley
Black Frog Tech

[Needalittleinfo]

Hey thanks for the info, under what area can i find the max HD size in the bios?

[crossedup]

It will not be stated as such in the BIOS, depends on the age. I forget the year, ill have to check.

The new maxtor 7200k RPM drive with 16MB cache onboard is supposed to really kick some butt, for lack of a better term. Might want to look into that.

[Needalittleinfo]

Thanks for the suggestion I'll look into it, the board isn't that ols it supports a athlon xp 1800+ so I think it will be ok but i will check. Oh yeah, would it support the 10000 rpm drives under the 132gig mark if the board doesn't support over 132?

[crossedup]

RPM shouldnt make a differance as far as support, thats HD specific, mechanical.

Heres a link to a page that explains the ATA limit, its 137GB, oops.

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/bios/sizeGB128-c.html

Some other good info there for you as well.

[roley]

Yeah, that 16MB Cache drive from Maxtor sounds interesting...have not really heard much on it yet...wonder how it stacks up in testing???

I'll have a look around.

Roley
Black Frog Tech

[crossedup]

Was in maximum pc this month, trounced the Hitachi and almost got the raptor.

SATA and PATA interfaces. SATA 150, PATA 133.

http://www.maxtor.com/portal/site/ma...iamondMax%2010

^ maxtor link

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProduc...144-359&depa=0

^ newegg, SATA, $242.99, 300GB