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New Hard Drive

Discussion in 'Technology' started by Nass, Mar 27, 2007.

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  1. Nass

    Nass sound. Staff

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    New Hard Drive

    My HDD started giving the clicks of death last night but is okay this morning, tonnes of important photos etc which i have not backed up on it - what are my options for internal and external hard drives? Where is literally the cheapest to get them as well?
    Nass, Mar 27, 2007
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  3. ManofScience

    ManofScience Guest

    dabs.

    i just got a 340gb external USB2 hard drive for £55. total bargain.
    ManofScience, Mar 27, 2007
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  4. loopyloosy

    loopyloosy Registered User

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    back em up NOW. asap.

    I would go for an internal HD, for its aesthetic properties, and isnt it a wee bit faster then going thorough a cable? (help me out geeks).

    You can get some really decent ones on ebay, but you will probably get some cracking sites from the geeks, in fact, I dont know why I bothered replying to this TBH. SOrry for getting your hopes up lol
    loopyloosy, Mar 27, 2007
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  5. loopyloosy

    loopyloosy Registered User

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    Thats the fucker :up:
    loopyloosy, Mar 27, 2007
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  6. ManofScience

    ManofScience Guest

    and your internal one is probably about to die so that'll need replacing too and windows re-installing
    ManofScience, Mar 27, 2007
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  7. loopyloosy

    loopyloosy Registered User

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    the click of doom like :(
    loopyloosy, Mar 27, 2007
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  8. French William

    French William _________________

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    You got a link to that? And do you know if they deliver outside the UK?
    French William, Mar 27, 2007
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  9. ManofScience

    ManofScience Guest

    ManofScience, Mar 27, 2007
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  10. French William

    French William _________________

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    Thanks.

    One of the reviews says it only has 298gb available for use, what's with the other 22gb then?
    French William, Mar 27, 2007
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  11. ManofScience

    ManofScience Guest

    it's the same with all drives. 320gb is the PHYSICAL size as manufacutured, but once it's formatted using whatever file system, (FAT32, NTFS, etc) you only get a certain available amount to file tables, etc - it's the same with any internal/external drive...someone once explained it...
    ManofScience, Mar 27, 2007
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  12. Mr.B.ThatsMe

    Mr.B.ThatsMe 'yi raji puff

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    An internal hdd also goes through a cable :p (however, seeing as i've clearly proved i'm not up to geek standards when it comes to knowing anything about the ways computers work, I can't quite say what speed data travels through IDE cables). I know theres 133 cables or something which are faster than 100's. :monkey:
    Mr.B.ThatsMe, Mar 27, 2007
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  13. Alexander

    Alexander Registered User

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    oh dear thats cheap as chips!!!
    Alexander, Mar 27, 2007
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  14. Conway

    Conway helmet Staff

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    I have a good example in an old drive I've just found, it's a 10.05GB disk, but only has a useable area of around 9GB.

    This is because the size of the disk is measured in two different ways: physical and actual.

    With physical size, 1KB is 1000bytes. 1MB is 1000,000 KB.

    Actual Size under Windows (using NTFS or FAT32): 1KB is 1024bytes, 1MB is 1024KB.

    So in that example, the physical size of my disk is

    10050000000 bytes.

    Divide that by 1024 and then by 1024 again to get the size in MB, then by 1000 to get the actual size in GB.

    You end up with:

    9.58GB as the useable size of the disk.

    Manufacturers tend to quote the larger size as the capacity of the disk (my primary drive has a physical size of 160gb but an actual capacity of 128GB).

    With every disk drive there's an overhead for stuff which eats up space.

    Every file is made up of data... a certain amount is taken up by information about the file, where the file is on the disk, where different bits of files are... all this takes up space you can't use for other stuff

    Some filesystems are more efficient than others at using space on hard disks. NTFS is the most efficient system for Windows, while the best one for Linux is currently still being decided in a geek slanging match somewhere.
    Conway, Mar 29, 2007
    #13
  15. trance_fan

    trance_fan Registered User

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    :clap:

    as for the speeds of internal vs external you will be hard pushed to tell the difference unless you have some seriously beefy internal drives like 10,000 RPM Raptors

    Bear in mind.....

    ATA133 = 133mbits/sec
    SATA = 150mbits/sec
    USB 2.0 = up to 480mbits/sec (although you will never get that!)

    Obviously there will be other overheads on the USB bus, especially if you have other devices plugged in etc. Will also depend on power, what other devices you have and so on.

    I watch films off of my external drive all the time and there is never any lagging.

    I got a 300GB Western Digital job for £79.99 a few months back.
    trance_fan, Mar 29, 2007
    #14
  16. Jason Bourne

    Jason Bourne Registered User

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    Steal

    Apparently the New Hitachi 500GB drive is nearly as fast as 74GB 16MB cache raptor :eek:
    Jason Bourne, Mar 29, 2007
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  17. Jason Bourne

    Jason Bourne Registered User

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    If I'm gonna be honest.. my raptor doesn't seem noticably quicker than my 7,200 drives..

    Not that I care.. rebuilding 2moro anyway :)
    Jason Bourne, Mar 29, 2007
    #16
  18. mr.K

    mr.K motherfucker

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    bollocks!!! must get mine sorted:oops:
    mr.K, Mar 29, 2007
    #17
  19. Sweeney

    Sweeney Registered User

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    Theres a proper geek-off going on in this thread like :lol: :cool:
    Sweeney, Mar 29, 2007
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  20. trance_fan

    trance_fan Registered User

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    You just have the 1 raptor?

    Get another one and get them in a RAID0!
    trance_fan, Mar 30, 2007
    #19
  21. trance_fan

    trance_fan Registered User

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    oh and just wait til solid state disks are more widespread :eek:

    seek times up to 100 times faster than a rotating disk :up:
    trance_fan, Mar 30, 2007
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