New Hard Disk Needed, Any Advise ?

[pbkk]

Evening all,

My hard disk is fried on my desktop and I need to pay a trip to Pantip to get a new one. I followed instructions online to remove the fried one which amazed myself as I know very little about computers and it was very easy to do ( I don't want to lug the whole tower down there) and I wanted to ask if I need to replace it with the same make/brand etc or can I upgrade ?

Do I need to upgrade ?

If I upgrade will the improved specs clash with the other stuff in the computer ?

My hard disk is a Hitachi Deskstar

sata 11

capacity:250GB

7200RPM

If there's anything I've left out please ask

Any advise would be greatly appreciated

Thanks,

pbkk

[dave_boo]

You don't need to replace with the same model. It may be a little harsh, but I don't trust Hitachi disks after the whole Deskstar incident. Granted that was a little while ago, but still.

I would recommend going with a Seagate drive. In my experience, they've been the most trouble free. Please stay away from Maxtor!!!

Also, ask the shop that you're buying from to hook the drive up to another computer in front of you and verify that there's no problems. A hard drive is a collection of platters with an arm above them that reads the data. And like old phonograph records, if that arm falls down and scratches the platters, the record is shot. And you don't really want to deal with getting home and finding out your shiny new hard drive had a rough trip to the store before you bought it, do you?

An "upgraded" hard drive will not affect your other components. In fact, unless you're working with Photoshop or playing games, you probably wouldn't notice the difference between a 5400 RPM drive and a 7200 RPM drive or a 16mb versus a 32mb cache.

Basically, find something in your price range that will have more than enough storage for what you think you're going to use.

**disclaimer**

I would suggest moving the hard drive to a different controller plug before assuming it's dead. Also, if you have access to another cable, try that. It's easy to rule things out before dropping cash, and I don't want to see anyone burned by buying equipment they don't actually need; i.e. you get home with a new hard drive and it won't show up in your computer even though it did at the store.

[jstumbo]

And then the fun will begin because you will need to reinstall everything on your computer.

[ignis]

Maybe some will not agree with me, but in the past have had problems with HDDs

Now I have inside my case 2x 160 gig sata 11 7200RPM...

also have 2x HDDs in cases via USB. 120gig & 200gig, one I use as backup 1x per week. the other I use about 1x per month and 'Ghost' my C+D+G+L drives to this HDD

If there is a problem then do not have to reformat as i can just plug in the other HDD and your away with all the same settings...

Whe you go to buy your HDD take your old one with you......... maybe just maybe the shop will be able to get everything off your old HDD and put onto the new HDD.

[yeti]

What you can do is bring the fried one to the shop, ask them to make sure it's fried. If it is indeed fried buy a new one, it doesn't have to be the same make/model, capacity or speed (RPM), just needs to be Sata 11. Basically buy the biggest capacity available for your budget (HDDs are never big enough).

[cali]

Maybe some will not agree with me, but in the past have had problems with HDDs

Now I have inside my case 2x 160 gig sata 11 7200RPM...

Running multiple hard drives carries about every single reliability disadvantage unless you are running redundant RAID. Two hard drives vibrating next to each other is known to create interference that can cause faillures. Two hard drives generates twice as much heat. Two hard drives block more of the case airflow and further reduce cooling capability. The mathematical probability of experiencing a hard drive failure rises when you run two.

I have never had a hard drive fail, but do everything I can to avoid it meaning I run one drive, assure it is properly secured, properly cooled, and properly handled. I also backup. I know someone who has the exact 500GB Seagate drive as I do and had two of them fail within a short space of ownership and swore never to get another Seagate. I looked at his case and he left the drive loose rather than screwing it secure plus there was no airflow to where the drives were mounted. After fixing those issues, the 3rd drive has been fine.

[ignis]

Maybe some will not agree with me, but in the past have had problems with HDDs

Now I have inside my case 2x 160 gig sata 11 7200RPM...

Running multiple hard drives carries about every single reliability disadvantage unless you are running redundant RAID. Two hard drives vibrating next to each other is known to create interference that can cause faillures. Two hard drives generates twice as much heat. Two hard drives block more of the case airflow and further reduce cooling capability. The mathematical probability of experiencing a hard drive failure rises when you run two.

I have never had a hard drive fail, but do everything I can to avoid it meaning I run one drive, assure it is properly secured, properly cooled, and properly handled. I also backup. I know someone who has the exact 500GB Seagate drive as I do and had two of them fail within a short space of ownership and swore never to get another Seagate. I looked at his case and he left the drive loose rather than screwing it secure plus there was no airflow to where the drives were mounted. After fixing those issues, the 3rd drive has been fine.

Both hard drives have twin fans screwed onto them. as I have 5 HDD bays they are not together so plenty of air between them.

My hard drive failures were when I was running a single drive in the case + an external for back ups.

Also in past years have had 4 External stop working over the years, [ALL my externals are normal hard drives IEE in cases via USB] now a day only switch externals on when I use them, max 1hr per time max twice a week.

Friend has a 40 gig only in his case, in the last 4 year he has had to replace this + re-format etc 3 times... + 10 Externals, 6 of them being 500 gig each, some are VERY old and has never had a problem with any of them [ALL are external units]

Are the external units better that a drive in a external drive case ?? they are a lot smaller + much more expensive.

[yeti]

The OP has probably no idea what you two are arguing about

[Guest Reimar]

Come on cali, I run 6 HDD's in my server 24/7 for the past 3 years with NO problems. All Hdd's stay in one bay one on top of the next and 2 fans in front to cool all of them. The distance between each HDD is below 1 cm.

The most worst HDD's I had was WD! Except one, a 40 GB, all other fails within the 1. year while running 24/7! Seagate drives very slow and very hot compare to others. No problems with IBM Deskstar, Hitachi Deskstar or even Maxtor while the Maxtor's the fastest of them! By the way Maxtor is an Seagate devision but Seagate let Maxtor alive without the change anything of the Technic or so to its own technic. Using an Maxtor in systems with high data transfers between different drives and even computers, save you a lot of time because the data transfer is nearly doubble than for the Seagate.

Last are experiences from me over the past years. The most slow drives for Server systems, running SCSI HDD's only, shows that the Seagate SCSI HDD's just reaching 60% of the transfer speed than an IBM SCSI HDD with same size and same spec. From 8 Seagate 146 GB SCSI III 10.000 rpm drives (each cost 2 years ago THB 26.000!) 5 was failing within 8 month and the first one was running just 3 weeks! In the meantime all are changed to IBM with same spec and not any problems. After all 8 drives was changed, the time of backup the whole system to an external standby system with IDE drives, was reduced to nearly half of the time.

I don't use Seagate any more and if some of my customers want to buy a Seagate from me, I wouldn't sell them and send my customer to shopping for that drives by himself.

And why ""Running multiple hard drives carries about every single reliability disadvantage unless you are running redundant RAID."" taht? And what Raid you suggest for novices to run? Raid 0 or Raid 1 or Raid 5 or Raid 10? And you may also forget to mention that you need to have a special controller for to use Raid, on board or an extra card!

As Yeti wrote, the OP wouldn't know what we talking about in technical terms!

Cheers.

[meadish_sweetball]

Two very important points in protecting yourself from hardware failure is to get a quality power supply (box for delivery of electricity mounted inside the case) and a good brand UPS (uninterrupted power supply, essentially a box with a battery connected between your computer and your wall outlet, that protects your computer from sudden electricity blackouts and power spikes).

I am certain my previous hard disk failures are partially due to not understanding those two points.

[dave_boo]

Maybe some will not agree with me, but in the past have had problems with HDDs

Now I have inside my case 2x 160 gig sata 11 7200RPM...

Running multiple hard drives carries about every single reliability disadvantage unless you are running redundant RAID. Two hard drives vibrating next to each other is known to create interference that can cause faillures. Two hard drives generates twice as much heat. Two hard drives block more of the case airflow and further reduce cooling capability. The mathematical probability of experiencing a hard drive failure rises when you run two.

I have never had a hard drive fail, but do everything I can to avoid it meaning I run one drive, assure it is properly secured, properly cooled, and properly handled. I also backup. I know someone who has the exact 500GB Seagate drive as I do and had two of them fail within a short space of ownership and swore never to get another Seagate. I looked at his case and he left the drive loose rather than screwing it secure plus there was no airflow to where the drives were mounted. After fixing those issues, the 3rd drive has been fine.

Both hard drives have twin fans screwed onto them. as I have 5 HDD bays they are not together so plenty of air between them.

My hard drive failures were when I was running a single drive in the case + an external for back ups.

Also in past years have had 4 External stop working over the years, [ALL my externals are normal hard drives IEE in cases via USB] now a day only switch externals on when I use them, max 1hr per time max twice a week.

Friend has a 40 gig only in his case, in the last 4 year he has had to replace this + re-format etc 3 times... + 10 Externals, 6 of them being 500 gig each, some are VERY old and has never had a problem with any of them [ALL are external units]

Are the external units better that a drive in a external drive case ?? they are a lot smaller + much more expensive.

Well, technically, all external drives have the same properties as internal drives. However, quite a few manufacturers have "Enterprise" lines. Perhaps they use those in external drives as well? They are rated for a greater MTBF.

The reason an external drive can last longer is that it only needs to spin up when you're writing to it. Contrast this to an internal drive that's used as a home partition (or a scratch disk or a swap disk or whatever) where the OS is constantly readin/writing to it. Everytime you open a program, read the registry, etc, you drive has to spin. Now if you're only using the drive for reads and occasional writes, say for back ups, think how much less it has to work.

I suppose if you wanted the best bet for hard drive stability, you'd go with a SSD (granted they have a limited write cycle life) for your OS install, a smallish quick drive for your applications/swap file and finally one of those honking huge drives for your media files. Using a SSD would be ideal, because after you get your OS installed and updated, few writes would occur. Reading from a SSD doesn't count against its lifecycle. The large hdd would spend most of its time waiting on you to read from it (it would probably be ideal to get one of those new power saving models), and the smaller disk with your apps/swap would be the 'fail point' in this setup.

The post by meadish_sweetball can not be over-emphasised. The quality of power going into your machine has a direct determination on the life of your parts. For example, one time in a hurry, I got the plugs for my laptop and my external drive crossed and since the laptop's power brick kicks out so much more power it pretty much fried the drive. Notice, it didn't fry the enclosure, but just the drive. In fact I still use the enclosure with another drive!