# Good or Not?



## Phippsp (Jan 27, 2005)

Would this be considered a good Hard Drive?

WESTERN DIGITAL WD2000JD 200GB SERIAL ATA HDD 7200 RPM 8MB BUFFER BARE DRIVE WESTERN DIGITAL WD2000JD 200GB SERIAL ATA HDD 7200 RPM 8MB BUFFER BARE DRIVE


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## dave597 (Jan 27, 2005)

thats a pretty cool drive, 400 gig ones are even better tho.


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## Praetor (Jan 27, 2005)

> Would this be considered a good Hard Drive?


Sure but what are your intentions 



> thats a pretty cool drive, 400 gig ones are even better tho


WD makes 400GB drives? Last time I checked it was just Hitatchi


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## dave597 (Jan 27, 2005)

yeh i meant by hitachi


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## Phippsp (Jan 27, 2005)

Well my attentions are mostly aimed at a good gaming pc thats what im tring to build.  So far with Amd 3500, Asus A8V Delux, and BFG Geforce 6800 Ultra 256mb I think im off to a good start.  Now I just need to get the hard drive, the cd rom and cd burner, and the memory.


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## PC Technology INC. (Jan 27, 2005)

I prefer the one with 1TB which is 1024GB


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## Cromewell (Jan 27, 2005)

PC Technology INC. said:
			
		

> I prefer the one with 1TB which is 1024GB


really...you have a 1TB drive?  I find that very hard to believe


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## SFR (Jan 28, 2005)

PC Technology INC. said:
			
		

> I prefer the one with 1TB which is 1024GB


 


1,099,511,627,776 ....Thats a lot of bytes.



http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=10462




..I kinda hope I am around for the *Brontobyte Hard Drive:*

1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000


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## mgoldb2 (Jan 28, 2005)

Praetor said:
			
		

> WD makes 400GB drives? Last time I checked it was just Hitatchi



not just hitatchi, seagate makes them also    but you correct in that to my knowlege WD does not make them.


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## 4W4K3 (Jan 28, 2005)

how will a dedicated gaming computer use up 200GB??? You'd have to have a buttload of huge games...

Gaming computers don't need lots of storage, it can actually produce slower access times if you get too big of a drive. usually you get a small drive to load XP on and your most important stuff, then a larger drive JUST for storage. But w/e floats your boat...


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## Phippsp (Jan 28, 2005)

Ok so your saying that i should get a smaller hard drive for xp, and game, and the basic stuff, and then I should get another hard drive for misc things such as  downloading songs, saved files and pictures and stuff and the second hard drive wont effect any performance of the first hard drive?


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## 4W4K3 (Jan 28, 2005)

Phippsp said:
			
		

> Ok so your saying that i should get a smaller hard drive for xp, and game, and the basic stuff, and then I should get another hard drive for misc things such as  downloading songs, saved files and pictures and stuff and the second hard drive wont effect any performance of the first hard drive?



...i think thats exactly what i meant lol. Having a smaller dedicated XP drive will allow for slightly faster access/transfer/read/write times. The secondary drive won't slow down the first one UNLESS it has some kind of defect or a MAJOR difference. You want to match drives if you use 2...don't get a 5400RPM and mush it with a 10,000RPM drive. You'll want them both to run on the same transfer system speed too, like both IDE, SATA, RAID...w/e. I don't think you can do 1 IDE and one SATA.


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## Phippsp (Jan 28, 2005)

Well then I believe I will find one with SATA since I heard that is the new latest technology and will match the RPMS's up.  Is there anything else I should consider in this matching? 

And could you possible tell me about the size you think I shall need for my first and my second.  All i will be doing is have about at the most 3 games ever at one time on my computer.  Mostly Everquest II and mabye another MMOPRG and  then just some regular game.  And will have the following parts in my computer which you see in my signiture.  And will proble have AIM, Mozilla Firefox and what not on it.  The second hard drive I will proble store pictures from my camera, song files, and just saved d/l's. 

Is this something that will relate to RAID?


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## 4W4K3 (Jan 28, 2005)

I'd probably do a 20GB+60GB...but i don't even use 20GB as it is so yah. If you think you will be having alot of stuff you couls do a 40GB+160GB...but thats up to you. 

I believe a RAID0 is the fastest type of connection you can get, besides the SATA2 on the NF4 lol. Plain SATA should prove to be fast enough for a gaming computer though, alot of people are still using ATA100 lol.

You want basically the SAME EXACT harddrive, just one version smaller than the other. Let's use an example:

WD 40GB 7200RPM SATA 8MB-Buffer
WD 80GB 7200RPM SATA 8MB-Buffer

I wouldn't mix diff brands, RPM's architecture, or bufferspeeds, cuz then one will bottlenecjk another and you will get problems (on a RAID connection it just flat out shouldn't work unless they are identical)


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## mgoldb2 (Jan 28, 2005)

if you using raid you using both harddrive as one so you not putting windows on the smaller one you putting windows on both of them.  You can still partition it so you have one small partition for windows and one big one for storage but the data in either partition is going on both harddrives.  The whole purpose of raid 0 is so both harddrive can work at the same time seeking the same file.


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## Phippsp (Jan 28, 2005)

So what is a RAID array my friend keeps bringing up?  What does it do and is it good or a bad thing?


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## 4W4K3 (Jan 28, 2005)

mgoldb2 said:
			
		

> if you using raid you using both harddrive as one so you not putting windows on the smaller one you putting windows on both of them.  You can still partition it so you have one small partition for windows and one big one for storage but the data in either partition is going on both harddrives.  The whole purpose of raid 0 is so both harddrive can work at the same time seeking the same file.



ah yah, i got confused on that. That's why RAID 0 is potentially more dangerous, you have one drive fail and both are screwed. because half of your file might be on one HDD and the other part is on the other non accessible one. Running RAID 0 will still be considerably faster than a standard ATA setup or even SATA150 i believe. But for a true dedicated drive i thik a different SATA setup is needed (someone knows which it is..i don't i think it's something like RAID 2 or 3)

http://www.acnc.com/raid.html

^THAT will do a MUCCCHHH better job of explaining than i could ever do lol.


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## mgoldb2 (Jan 28, 2005)

Phippsp said:
			
		

> So what is a RAID array my friend keeps bringing up?  What does it do and is it good or a bad thing?



There 2 type of raid that is comman for the normle home user.

RAID 0 stripping

RAID 1 mirroring

From my experience more people use RAID 0 for there home computer then RAID 1.   

With Raid 0 you dont want to use 2 different size harddrive like one person sugested.  I am pretty sure if you have a 20gb and 80gb and use raid 0 you will only get 40 gb of storage because it ignores the other 60gb in the 80gb but if you use 2 identicle harddrives like 2 80GB then you will get the full 160GB.
RAID 0 is when Data is divided when it is written to both drives so that the workload is balanced and thus more efficient.  The data is broken up into chunks or stripes when it is alternatingly stored.

RAID 1 is use to enhance performane on the other hand RAID 1 is for security reason.  RAID 1 keeps a identicle copy of it self on the secound harddrive so if the first 1 breaks you can just switch it with the secound one and you lose nothing.  the cost is you lose the abilty to store anything on the secound harddrive.

What you proberly want to consider is RAID 0
the one disadvantage of RAID 0 is if one harddrives crashes you lose ALL your data even if there nothing wrong with the secound harddrive.


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## Cromewell (Jan 28, 2005)

yes RAID 0 is much faster than a single SATA drive. the 10k rpm drives dont use the full bandwidth of SATA, even ATA133 isn't fully used with a 7200rpm HDD.


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## Phippsp (Jan 28, 2005)

RAID 0 seems faster ic but RAID 1 is much safer this is what ur telling me?


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## 4W4K3 (Jan 28, 2005)

Phippsp said:
			
		

> RAID 0 seems faster ic but RAID 1 is much safer this is what ur telling me?



Basically yes. The chances of a brand new HDD failing are pretty low, but if it does happen and you are running RAID0 you lost ALL your data even though you have 2 seperate drives. I prefer RAID1 just for security, but RAID0 is proven to be faster.


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## mgoldb2 (Jan 28, 2005)

Phippsp said:
			
		

> RAID 0 seems faster ic but RAID 1 is much safer this is what ur telling me?



correct with RAID 0 will be faster.  RAID 1 is safer especially if you cant afford to lose your data.


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## Phippsp (Jan 28, 2005)

how difficult is it to setup RAID0?


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## Phippsp (Jan 28, 2005)

would this be a good combo two of these for RAID0 and what about could this be possible to have 3 hard drives 2 on RAID0 and a third as a backup?   

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=22-145-049&depa=0


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## mgoldb2 (Jan 28, 2005)

Phippsp said:
			
		

> would this be a good combo two of these for RAID0 and what about could this be possible to have 3 hard drives 2 on RAID0 and a third as a backup?
> 
> http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=22-145-049&depa=0



yes you can have 2 harddrives on the raid controler and a third on the IDE interface.

edit: what motherboard you choseing make sure it has RAID.


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## Phippsp (Jan 28, 2005)

Asus AV8 it has RAID


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## mgoldb2 (Jan 28, 2005)

Phippsp said:
			
		

> Asus AV8 it has RAID



I believe that motherboard can support up to 8 harddrives if you have no cd drives connected.  if you have 2 cddrives then it can support 6 harddrives.


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## Phippsp (Jan 28, 2005)

Well i think im going with Dvd-rom and cd-burner I havent yet gotton into learning cd drives yet im now learning about hard drive   Im learning as im builing learned all about Motherboard and video card now im learning about hard drives, next is memory then cd drives.  So im going to have 2 cd drives and i belive will this be good?

2 80gb hard drives on RAID0
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=11-171-055&depa=0
and 1 160gb hard drive?

Both 7200rpm 8mb buffer and same brand proble Maxtor?


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## Phippsp (Jan 28, 2005)

What do I need to setup raid and to setup the third motherboard is it all bios setting up or is it something I need to buy.


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## Yeti (Jan 28, 2005)

I just bought two of those Hitachi 80 GBs a week ago and set them as RAID0 (they went down in price 50 cents too  ) Thats a good idea to have the RAID setup plus another drive for storage (I have the RAID plus a 160 GB and 250 GB for storage) since I don't completely trust keeping any important data on RAID.  As far as setup, you'll need to change a few things in your BIOS and if you're going to install the OS on the array you'll have to load the drivers (F4) when installing windows - so no you don't have to buy anything else.


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## Phippsp (Jan 28, 2005)

Ok for me that was basicall gibberish i understood the hard drives and bios but I have never really messed around in the bios.  Is this something that I could proble do and proble not mess up with some sort of guidance like a webpage or something?


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## Yeti (Jan 28, 2005)

All you really need to do is study your motherboard manual.  It should explain everything.  And if you have questions about something thats unclear (which is likely) just post them.  As far as my post being gibberish , sorry about that I was basically commending your decision.


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## Phippsp (Jan 28, 2005)

only reason i said gibberish was because i didn't understand some of the stuff nearing the end


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## Yeti (Jan 28, 2005)

Yeah, thats basically just stuff about installing windows onto a new RAID array.  You'll understand when you get there.


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## Phippsp (Jan 28, 2005)

mgoldb2 said "yes you can have 2 harddrives on the raid controler and a third on the IDE interface."


Does this mean I should buy the third back up hard drive maken sure it is IDE? as i look on newegg some of them say IDE on them


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## Yeti (Jan 28, 2005)

Technically IDE (integrated drive electronics) is either PATA which is commonly referred to (incorrectly) as IDE, and SATA (S=serial, P=parallel).  If I don't correct you on that someone else will.  Yes, it is possible to have 2 HDDs on RAID and one (or more) PATA drive.  Its also possible to have 2 SATA on RAID and one other SATA HDD.  Its really just preference.  Most hard drives don't use the full bandwidth of ATA133 (common PATA speed) much less the speed of SATA.


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## Phippsp (Jan 28, 2005)

Alright this I think about sums it up.  But 1 last thing to say here.  Im tring to find either 2 40gb 7200 SATA hard drives and 1 80gb 7200 SATA hard drive.

But at the moment I can only find a reasonable 2 80gb 7200 SATA HDD which I think would only be reasonable to get a 160gb 7200 SATA HDD.  Now i know you told mean I can use a PATA with the SATA ones but Id rather keep it simple   I heard the less gb you have will incrase the computer performance.  Now the jump from 40 to 80 as I saw price wise they are almost the same.  And also I don't believe that the performance would be much of a difference either.  But im just asking if im incorrect would there be a big difference?  Price wise I think the 40's and 80 would save me some bucks. Since the 40 will equal 80 which is plenty of space since im not running any special things except gaming.  The 40's are just a bit easier to find a match.


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## Yeti (Jan 28, 2005)

I'm a little confused by that last post. Are you looking for 2 40 GB drives or 2 80 GB drives? 1 160 GB?  As far as speed is concerned, I wouldn't worry about going from a 40 GB drive to a 80 GB (especially if their in RAID), you won't be able to tell the difference.  I would go with the 80 GB drives (actually I already did - 2 80GB Hitachi) since they are maybe a couple bucks more than the 40 GB drives.  And you might find a use for the extra space someday (try digital video recording - fills hard drive space very fast)


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## Phippsp (Jan 28, 2005)

My friend just brough up something today that I did not know...RAID 5!  He says that RAID is a great way if you would buy 3 hard drives of the same type.  Like Hitachi 80gb 7200rpm 8mb x3 you could set it up on RAID 5 and have just as fast and he told me that if one of them crash then you would not loose any information that you have.  Is this true would it better to ook up RAID 5 with three HDD or should my regular statement still go with 2 HDD on RAID0 and have a third one as a back up?

How many RAIDs are there?  I seen a RAID6 and I just didn't pay attention to it.


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## Yeti (Jan 28, 2005)

To make a long story short - to use RAID 5 you should really have a specific RAID controller (though Windows XP can do it) because it uses a lot of CPU processing.  Most motherboards support onboard RAID 0 and 1 which is why thats what you see people using most often.

RAID 5 - storage = (number of hard drives - 1) x storage capacity of each drive


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## PC Technology INC. (Feb 13, 2005)

Cromewell said:
			
		

> really...you have a 1TB drive?  I find that very hard to believe



No I don't. But if I was capable, I would have 1 or 2-22


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