What would be a good H/D to Purchase

[leon]

Hi guys, after doing everything possible to sort out this computer of mine, and speaking to some expert people on the subject, I have decided to replace the hard drive and start fresh.

Can i replace it with any brand, or do i need to purchase waht was installed in it when it was built fro me.

It presently has a Samsung H/D 753LJ.

Thank you.

Leon :thumbsup:

[mithrandir]

Leon, any 3.5" SATA disk will fit. The 753LJ may have been superceded. A quick search suggests it might be easier to get a 1TB disk.
I don't have any Samsung disks so can't comment on them. I do have several from Western Digital (in my NAS) and Seagate (in the PCs) and they have not caused any issues.
If your PC supports RAID I'd suggest you get two identical disks and get them set up as RAID-1, so a single disk failure will not lose everything on you.

[FlashDrive]

Leon....any ' brand ' of HD is OK.....as long as it fits and is the right physical size....ie 2.5 inch for Laptop ...or 3.5 inch for most Desktops.

Pick an approriate size you want....500GB...750GB...or bigger.....whatever you decide.
Most people have a preference to a particular ' brand ' ...I like Seagate and some Western Digital.
SSD's...prefer Patriot or Intel SSD's.

If you go for a ' large ' capacity drive 500GB or above...if you can, put ' C ' Drive on a separate partition.....but this is not a necessity if you don't know how to do this.

Hope this helps.

Col...... :hi:

[leon]

Many thanks indeed.

Leon

[billdan]

Just a suggestion Leon, this is what I did on my mini-tower, install a small drive for C: (on mine its 80Gb ), and a large D: drive. say 500Gb.

Only use C: drive for Windows and its updates and a virus checker, don't save any data to C: drive.

This way if a nasty gets in its easy to to reformat C: and re-install windows from the CD, without having to worry about lost data.

Bill

P.S I also install all my programs onto D drive as well

[mithrandir]

Due to Window's uncivilised behaviour of putting parts of application installs in the %SystemRoot% directory, and the registry in particular, installing apps on other drives doesn't protect you from having to reinstall them if Windows gets corrupted. You would probably be better off to regularly mirror the system drive to an external USB or eSATA drive. Clonezilla (http://clonezilla.org/downloads.php) is one such tool.

[leon]

Thanks for your help, and Bill what you suggested seems like a reasonably good idea as well

Leon

[Lee]

I put a small SSD in the obs computer, to speed up plate solving, which it did nicely.... wasn't expensive, I think around $150 or so for a 128GB....

[acropolite]

Nothing wrong with Samsung drives, they are as reliable as any other

+ 1 for Lee's suggestion, if your hardware will support, buy an SSD, one of the Samsung 840 Pro series, from memory I paid a little over $200 for 256Gb. In addition get a 1Tb or larger as a secondary drive to store your data.
You really should run either Win7 or Win 8 with SSD drives. Win 8 boot times with SSD are lightning fast.

If your hardware is too old, better off to start with a new motherboard/cpu/ram and do your sums, often it can be more cost effective to buy a notebook than a desktop these days.

[leon]

Yea, Phil your are right mate, it dose look like it is time to advance, and i have to admit i have been doing some looking and playing with varies systems.

Leon

[04Stefan07]

Mate, the best thing you could do to start fresh is do this.

As mentioned...

Buy a 120GB SSD and install your operating system on there and some programs that you use regularly. Then purchase a standard HDD (however much storage you need such as 500GB, 1TB, 2TB, etc) and store all your other data on there such as videos, music and photos.

SSD's are coming down in price and Intel are still one of the best on the market. I have a Samsung 840 Series (256GB) which are around $180 now but if you don't need that much storage then grab a 120GB Intel!!

http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=210_902_1221&products_id=25023

I highly recommend setting up your PC like this weather its upgrading, starting fresh or buying completely new! :).

[leon]

Thanks Stefan, agree, and i will be going down that path soon, the old XP is slowly dying, many thanks.

Leon

[2stroke]

western digital enterprise drives for mass storage and put in mirror raid, then 2 ssd for working in stripped raid for speed XD

I just use wd greens in raid mirrored in my HTPC though, as soon as 1 fails in the bin or rma and replace with a fresh asap.

If its just a single and you need space and speed on a budget try the seagate sshd whatever there calling them, they have 16gb ssd with a 7200rpm platter which does wonders for the price.

[pw]

SSD and platter do not belong together.
Solid State Drive - It's memory chips, no platters, no heads.

[2stroke]

Well you can read more here, there a great drive for single disk user and there proven to. For the average laptop users there really great if you are stuck with a single and want the best of both worlds. Well can lose your optical bay but thats a pain in the butt if you use it.

http://www.seagate.com/au/en/internal-hard-drives/laptop-hard-drives/laptop-solid-state-hybrid-drive/

also for desktop drives

http://www.seagate.com/au/en/internal-hard-drives/solid-state-hybrid/desktop-solid-state-hybrid-drive/