|
hard drive
ok my harddrive is extremely messedup so we were going to buy a new one. i was wondering...how do i find out what kind of hard drive i need to buyy?
thx
[ ]
Want to answer more questions in the Technology category?
Maybe give some free advice about: Computers?
just buy an extrenal hard drive.
$70 for 150 gigs.
]
**You aren't informed of my edits, and I can't respond directly to feedback, so please send questions directly to me in the future(click my name, then "ask question" on the right). You need a USB external drive because I doubt you have a firewire connection. An external drive is mostly the same as a regular drive, and you can store anything on it. The difference between an internal and external is:
-External is cheaper
-You can't run an OS from an external, you can't boot from it
-External is usually slower.
You can transfer mp3s to and from the external drive. If you meant an mp3 *player*, you would do it the normal way, the files would just be located in a different area. The external drive can be accessed in "my computer", but it has a different letter, probably "Local Drive(E:)".**
Turn off you computer, unplug it, and open it up. Find the hard drive, it looks like this:
[Link](Mouse over link to see full location)
Follow the cables on the hard drive to their source. One will go to a big box with a bunch of little wires(the power supply):
[Link](Mouse over link to see full location)
one will go to your sound card(if you have one):
[Link](Mouse over link to see full location)
and one will go to your motherboard:
[Link](Mouse over link to see full location)
the last one is the one you want.
If the motherboard cable looks like this:
[Link](Mouse over link to see full location)
you need a SATA. If the cable looks like this:
[Link](Mouse over link to see full location)
you need IDE(sometimes called ATA). The connector should be 20 pins long, if not you have a non-standard configuration and you'll need to tell whoever you're buying from how many pins there are. If buying your hard drive from a store, ask them for an "IDE hard drive" or "SATA hard drive". If from the internet(much better deals) look in the title. This is SATA: " Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD3200AAKS 320GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM". See how it says "SATA" in it.
The other thing you need to know is how much space the disk has. In drive storage only, 1GB=1000MB, 300GB=300000MB; this is different than normal(1GB=1024MB) because the manufacturers are evil and greedy. 1GB will usually hold one two-hour movie, of medium video quality. You need 15GB to run windows well, and I recommend at least 30GB, which will last you a while if you don't download a lot. I personally *do* download a lot, so I have two drives totaling 550GB.(My 300GB drive is used for storing my collection of... linux distributions. My 250GB is used to store the OS and programs of Ubuntu, Vista, and XP, I triple-boot with GRUB. If you want a similar arrangement, be sure to install XP, then Vista, then Ubuntu. Just in case you were interested :) )
The other numbers they'll give you don't matter as much. Here's an explanation, though:
-RPM: How fast the disk spins. You don't need to know this.
-xGB/s: X is a number, like 3GB/s. This is how fast data is read and written.
-xMB cache: X is a number, like 12MB cache. This is the disk cache, and it increases the writing speed a bit.
Good luck!
PS, if your hard drive is not full or broken, you don't need a new one, just ask a question about the actual problem. If it is broken, you need an internal, not external. If you've run out of space, get an external drive(USB, not firewire).
]
More Questions: |