New Hard Drive

[mccoady]

My son has a 5 year old Dell E520 Desktop and he needs a larger hard drive so I'm trying to decide between a 750GB or 1TB Western Digital Caviar Black. I thought I had read in the past that 1TB drives weren't too reliable has this improved?

If he goes with a 1TB drive is the $88 one the one he would want: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Productcompare.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007603%2050001 306%20600003269%20600003340&IsNodeId=1&bop=And&Com pareItemList=14|22-136-284^22-136-284-TS%2C22-136-533^22-136-533-TS

I have windows 7 on a couple of my computers and like it for several reasons one being it includes the ability (instead of using 3rd party software) to create an image of your hard drive. He has XP Pro as his OS do you think this would this be a good time to upgrade to Windows 7?

[redwudz]

Your link doesn't work. Maybe this one? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136284

I don't really see any difference between 750GB or 1000GB drives presently for reliability. It may vary somewhat between brands. I usually stick with WD, but I've recently used Samsung HDDs with no problems. I still dislike Seagate, but that's just my opinion. I have several of the WD Black 1000GB and they've been reliable.

If that's a 5YO PC, make sure it can handle large drives, though likely not a problem.

I only have one PC still using XP. All the rest are W7 and a couple still run Vista. I prefer W7 over XP. You may have problems with a few older programs going from XP to W7, but I've had more problems using 64bit OSs. W7 is more stable than XP and XP is really not updated anymore, so I think it is a good time to upgrade, IMO.

[RabidDog]

Ha, get him the 1tb (or better 2tb), no point in going lower. As a family user look at getting a family licence from Microsoft (3 for $150). 1tb, 1.5tb 2tb are tried and trusted now, its only 2tb plus that are less compatible with older OS and older PC.
Caviar Black are more expensive but slightly better performing than other similar drives, probably not a noticeable diff in speed.
Win7 (even XP) will run much better with 2 or 4gb of memory ....

[Bjs]

As long the bios supports 48bit lba then the only issue is how big and brand ... personally samsung have been far superior to seagate and western digital units

[MJA]

Western Digital Caviar Blue WD5000AAKX 500GB $39

http://www.newegg.com/product/product.aspx?nm_mc=AFC-TechBargains&cm_mmc=AFC-TechBarga...82E16822136769

[mccoady]

Thanks guys it's the 1TB then http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136284

Redwudz how do I make sure it can handle a large drive I tried calling Dell but they won't talk to me unless I pay?

Bjs I'm not sure what you mean by as long as his bios supports 48 bit lba his current hard drives are (C) Samsung HD160JJ/P (160GB) and a second internal one WDC WD5000AAKS (500GB) surely if these work the above is compatible correct?

Belarc Adviser info for his Dell Dimension E520:

Operating System System Model
Windows XP Professional Service Pack 3 (build 2600) Dell Inc. Dell DM061
System Service Tag: XXXXXX
Chassis Serial Number: XXXXX
Enclosure Type: Mini-Tower
Processor a Main Circuit Board b
2.67 gigahertz Intel Pentium D
16 kilobyte primary memory cache
1024 kilobyte secondary memory cache Board: Dell Inc. 0WG864
Serial Number: ..CN4811169S00V8.
Bus Clock: 533 megahertz
BIOS: Dell Inc. 1.0.2 08/30/2006
Drives Memory Modules c,d
660.10 Gigabytes Usable Hard Drive Capacity
155.26 Gigabytes Hard Drive Free Space

TSSTcorp DVD+-RW TS-H553A [CD-ROM drive]

SAMSUNG HD160JJ/P [Hard drive] (160.00 GB) -- drive 0
WDC WD5000AAKS-00D2B0 [Hard drive] (500.11 GB) -- drive 1 2046 Megabytes Installed Memory

Slot 'DIMM_1' has 1024 MB (serial number E14BB801)
Slot 'DIMM_3' is Empty
Slot 'DIMM_2' has 1024 MB (serial number 823B3808)
Slot 'DIMM_4' is Empty
Local Drive Volumes

c: (NTFS on drive 0) 159.99 GB 6.55 GB free
m: (NTFS on drive 1) 500.11 GB 148.70 GB free

[MJA]

my brother in law bought a new black edition 1TB for his old PC . didn't recognize it until he updated the BIOS.
I think it was an Abit AN7 nforce 2 MB

[jagabo]

Seagate 2 TB $80: http://www.frys.com/product/5975474

I've seen WD and Samsung 2 TB at that price too. Check every few days -- a different 2 TB drive will be on sale.

[zoobie]

you have to watch those discount drives...the rpm is usually low

[bevills1]

WinXP SP3 is still updated and is not scheduled to discontinue support until 2014; WinXP SP2 and older is no longer updated. If the PC recognizes 160GB drive then 48 bit lba is supported because 48 bit lba support recognizes drives larger than 137GB I believe. I put a 1TB drive into a 6 year old Asus which recognized the full 1TB capacity.

[mccoady]

Thanks guys I ordered the WD drive I linked to plus the Windows 7 Home Premium Family Pack!

[redwudz]

I just mentioned compatibility as I'm not that familiar with Dell. If you are running a 500GB, 1000GB should not be a problem.

Some large drives, usually the 'Green' versions, run at 5400RPM to save energy and probably they are cheaper to build. But 5400RPM drives work fine for most applications. I like to use 10K RPM Raptors for boot drives, but I do have a few 5400 RPM drives for archival storage.

It's been a year or two since I've had a HDD failure. (Seagate 500GB). I have about 40 HDDs at present.

bevills1, thanks for the info about XP. I haven't been keeping track of it's updates.

EDIT: The W7 'Family Pack' is a great deal and really saves $$ if you have a couple of PCs.

[jagabo]

Officially, the family packs are "upgrades". But it's easy to get around if you want to perform fresh installs.

5400 RPM drives are fine for mass storage.

[lacywest]

Well as the old timers know about me ... I dont have any huge drives in my PC tower. The one I am currently using has a 160 Gig in it.

And the drive is partitioned with WIN XP Media Center Edition 2005 and the other partition has WIN 7 Ultimate x64. The PC in my specs took a dump awhile back and I was too busy doing customer PC repairs to stop and repair mine. So I put it on the floor and grab another one that was supposed to go in my bedroom.

The one I normally use has a WD 80 Gig in it ... samething .... two partitions ... WIN XP MCE 2005 and WIN 7 Ultimate x64.

For extra space ... I use several external USB drives ... all 500 Gigs in size.

I always make use I have my "D Drive" as the D Drive ... in XP or WIN 7 ... that is where the "Games" are installed. And it is also the Drive where my ... Recorded Videos ... are kept when I use the Media Center to record TV shows from my external outside antenna.

The ... D Drive ... is a 500 GB Maxtor USB 2.0 Drive with a Firewire connection [not used].

I just recently ... installed ... Crysis 2 Demo ... all my games play just fine through a USB 2.0 connection.

[mccoady]

I guess I do have another question my son has Carbonite (online backup service) backing up his files plus I'm going to use Windows Easy Transfer to backup files to an external drive then restore them after Windows 7 and the new drive are installed.

He uses iTunes and has lots of songs so he doesn't want me to screw up when I'm reinstalling everything. Which comes first, reinstalling iTunes and then restoring the iTunes folder, or restoring the iTunes folder and then reinstalling iTunes?

[Noahtuck]

Reinstall Itunes then the folder with all his music/covers/info

I have upgraded windows on a few laptops for people who use it for their Iphones.

They had like 50gigs of Itunes music so i just backed everything up to an external HDD instead of wasting 20 or so dvdr's.

[jagabo]

If you buy a boxed drive it will come with drive cloning software. Ie, the software can copy your boot drive to the new drive. Then you can swap the new drive in as the boot drive.

[freebird73717]

Or if you buy an oem drive you can download a program called easus disc copy. It's a linux based boot disc that will clone your old hard drive to a newer bigger one. I've used it a few times and it has always been successful for me. All I had to do after the clone was to go into disk management and extend the drive to use all the extra space. The reason I had to do this is because easus disc copy makes an exact clone of your original. i.e. if you had a 160gb drive and you clone it to a 1TB drive it will clone exactly 160gb over to that new drive leaving the rest unallocated. It's easy to expand that unallocated space in win 7. If cloning xp you'd have to use a partitioning disc like gparted or other partitioning software. Yes it's a few extra steps to go through but it's free software!

[bevills1]

Not all new drives come with cloning software in the package, but the cloning software is a free download from manufacturer's web site. I've used Seagate Discwizard to setup new drives on a number of systems, and I find Discwizard is both easier and much faster than any other method I've tried. I've also used Discwizard to create image to external usb drives of laoptop drives being replaced and then restore that image to the new laptop drive after it's been installed.

[mccoady]

Hey guys since I ordered the Windows 7 Family Pack and I only need two of the three licenses is it possible to let my mom use one even though it says something about the same household?

[classfour]

Yep: Just don't let the M$ police (a.k.a. "Peggy") catch it, or you'll have to move Mama in.

[mccoady]

A few more questions if you don't mind:

1. iTunes Reinstall - First I deauthorize it (on my old drive) before I install the new drive then I authorize it again after reinstalling iTunes but does it matter if I do this before or after I restore the music files?

As I mentioned above I'm using Windows Easy Backup to backup my files (including iTunes Folder) to an external drive. So after I've reinstalled iTunes and then restored the files does the backed up iTunes Folder actually replace the iTunes Folder from the iTunes reinstall? Any chance of duplicate files?

2. I have a second internal drive that i use for backups this will not be the drive Windows will be installed on but will the Windows 7 install mess with this drive like erasing files?

3. I know during the Windows 7 install it will also format the new drive so I assume it initializes it too correct? I'm only asking this because I plan on physically installing the new drive and immediately Installing Windows.

[jagabo]

2) The Win7 install will not mess with the other drives (unless you screw up and select the wrong drive for the install).

3) The Win7 install will let you partition and format the new drive. That's all that's needed.