Hard Drives and Ram

[leon]

Hi Guys if I am planing to replace the HD in a desktop dose it have to be the same as the one that came out of it.
Presently it has a Samsung SP2504C, but it is stuffed, so I need to replace it with something.
It only has to be about 1TB, any suggestions please.

Also it has 1GB DDR2-667Mhz PC 5300 Dimm RAM, I would also like to add or replace these, some suggestions here would also be appreciated.

Leon :thumbsup:

[stanlite]

Hi Leon

It doesn't have to be the same but it will require a re install of everything from windows up. Unless your snazzy with computers and can flash from one HDD to the other.

Probably easier just to install everything from scratch though.

the only thing you might need to watch is the type of connection you have to get to connect to the motherboard. By the looks of it your present HDD is a SATA connection so you shouldn't have a problem as most HDD now days are SATA. Watch out for cheapo HDD that might be "clearance" i know some PC shops are trying to clear out the older (and in your case obsolete) IDE connections.

Just ask/get a HDD with SATA or SATA3 connection and as much "space" as you need. You should be sweet. If you find something you like you can always type the product code (eg. Samsung SP2504C) into google with the word review and see what the market thinks of them.

[leon]

Thanks Grady, sounds good to me, will have a look on the net, and see what is available, and I will be doing a re-install, now to get hold of a bit more RAM.


Leon

[Screwdriverone]

Hey Leon.

Give someone like super billing computers at Ballarat a call, they have a wd blue 1tb Sata for only $75 and from memory, Western Digital drives come with a cool transfer program that moves your windows drive to the new one in about 30 Min or less. My son bought a drive to use as his primary and after a few clicks, it ran and cloned the main drive and swapped everything over. Give them a call to see if the wd blue has that and ask them about the best Ram for your motherboard and make sure you get a much as you can to put in there.

The drive could have also been a Samsung (my son thinks) the computer shop should know.

$75 is a good price for 1TB by the way

Cheers

Chris

[04Stefan07]

Hey mate.

Can you find out the make and model of your motherboard? If it is only taking 667MHz of RAM then it sounds like it might be DDR2 RAM. If we know the motherboard then we can try and max out what it can take or better yet upgrade.

The cheapest 1TB I have seen is $69 from PC Case Gear.

Let me know your mobo and we can look at the right RAM for it.

Hard drive you can go for something like this:
- http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=210_344&products_id=21231
- http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=210_344&products_id=19747

Stick with WD or Seagate. If you want better performing drives then you can spend a bit more. However I highly recommend getting an SSD to install Windows on then get a 1TB or 2TB HDD for your storage.

[redbeard]

Leon,

Don't waste your time mucking around with upgrades, there will always be a weak link in your system and you may not benefit fully from the upgrades.

Keep your monitor etc and get a new box with new bits. You will have an extremely better computer that is better matched and overall better performance.

If you are doing astrophotography processing on your computer then you will benefit from this. If you can afford it, get the SSD main drive and a WD black secondary for your data, (these cream the other WD drives for an extra $19). Otherwise just get the WD black as a main drive.

P.S. I have read many of your posts and the issues you have had with computers, do yourself a favour, you will not be disappointed. ;)

All the best.

[leon]

Excellent advise, many thanks for your responses, I have plenty to work with now, by the way Stefan, the mother board is a Gigabyte, GA M61SME -S2, well that is what is written on it.

This is just going to be an extra machine for Alice to work with, her Lappy is getting old and slow, and she dose grumble about it sometimes. :lol:

It dose not have to be real flash, as long as it works well for her.

Leon :thumbsup:

[mithrandir]

I have one warning if you are migrating. Newer drives are using native 4KB data clusters. Windows 7 (and probably 8) does not cope with some files built with 512B data being used on disks with 4KB data. That includes Windows Live Mail.

I had to find some 2nd hand 1TB disks to replace a failed one the RAID on in SWMBO's computer because I couldn't quickly find new ones with 512B data. I bought three just in case.

YMMV but be warned.

[PeterEde]

Is this a single drive system?
I prefer to build twin drive systems at minimum.
One drive for windows and room for the fat thing to grow and another for data.
that way if one drive fails you're not going to loose everything at once.
Also at minimum if your processing photos with DSS or Photoshop I'd go with a min of 8Gb RAM.
Also think of a backup system. An external 1 or 2 Tb HDD. These days you can get solid state drives with no disk and hybrid drives with lots of onboard memory and a disk.
An as Mithrandir mentions 32 or 64bit makes a difference to how much memory your machine can handle and the size of partitions on drives. But that issue may have been overcome in recent times?

I was a computer nerd once. part of the IT Crowd

[dannat]

if it were me the best performance gains I have seen is from a solid state drive swapped into the hDD bay. I have been buying 120Gb units from MSY in Melb for 75, then get a $20 usb-sata adapter to keep the data (if you have lots) on an old drive for retrieval..
for me RAM has only ever made small % diff's to performance say 10-15%, on my friends machine Word went from opening in 50sec with old Hdd to 10secs with the solid state

You prob need to buy a 2Gb stick of RAM though -1 isn't very much . MSY has 2Gb sticks of DDR2 for $35, (I would take the 1Gb stick out)

if her laptop is getting slow, why upgrade an old desktop -just whack the solid sate in the laptop -do you want the drive cloned? if you ant me to pickup/dropoff for you PM me (I race bikes in ballarat most sundays)

[leon]

Thanks Guys, and Daniel, i will certainly think about your offer, thank you.

Leon

[Kal]

you can buy 2x2GB (4GB total) DDR2 800 RAM for $20 shipped on ebay. Getting faster memory won't be a problem if it is cheaper than the DDR2 667 stuff. Just make sure it is DDR2 (and not the smaller notebook SODIMMS)

For the HDD you are probably best taking the effort to reinstall windows and all your apps with the new drive- a good cleanup can make for a faster pc in itself :)

[leon]

Thanks Andrew, I will have to get on to it soon, been a bit busy of late.

Leon

[mithrandir]

Before you go buying RAM, check the motherboard specifications. Older motherboards can't cope with the newer large DIMMs. You might be restricted to 2GB ones.

[OICURMT]

Leon:

While all of the advice is sound, the most important aspect of any upgrade is knowing what the limitations are of your current hardware.

The key to this is knowing your motherboard, which dictates the limits of RAM, I/O (for HDD's for example), and the bus (which limits the types of cards you can add, such as graphics, PCI peripherals etc...)

In your case, the HDD was released in 2006, which is before the SATA3 specs were finalized, consequently, your motherboard I suspect will not support a SATA3 drive.

Similarly, memory specs will probably be DDR or DDR2 given the 2006 timeframe.

If you can provide you motherboard model number, that would help.

OIC!

[leon]

Much advice and much to consider, thanks to all.
The Mother Board model No. is GA-M61SME-S2

Leon

[speach]

Why not get a external H/D and then put all your data on that keep your programmes on your installed H/D. Will save you reinstalling your programmes.

[Poita]

The specs for the motherboard are here:
http://www.cnet.com/products/gigabyte-ga-m61sme-s2l-motherboard-micro-atx-socket-am2-geforce-6100-series/specs/

It does indeed take DDR2 RAM, I probably have 4GB in the spares drawer that you could have for free, I'll take a look.

[Poita]

BTW, if the laptop is slow, it quite possibly could be sped up quite cheaply, drop me a PM with the model number and I'll check into it for you.