Replacing my hard drive need suggestions

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Frit0z

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Ok im looking for a couple suggestions since we have quite a few techy people in here.
My old hard drive is just that old.
Im thinking of getting the Western Digital Caviar Black
640GB
32MB Cache
2 Microprocessors
5 year warranty
$75

i want the best reliability/ size/ speed for around that price. nothing to fancy because i will be upgrading to SSD's when those come down in price.

Also i need some tips on some good software so i can copy everything from my current drive over to the new one so i dont have to reinstall my OS or anything else.
 
You can buy a 1TB drive for $5 more (on newegg or your other online store of choice), so I'd seriously consider that, or a 1.5TB drive (which has roughly the same price/capacity) if you could use the space. 2TB is new tech and too expensive for now.

Personally, I've had Seagate and Hitachi Drives lately, and never had a problem. Years ago, I had a Western Digital as well, which I didn't have a problem with either. With hard drives, it's kind of a luck-of-the-draw deal, so you can get a lemon with any brand if you're unlucky... I wouldn't worry about the brand overly much.

As far as good software to copy stuff over, I personally wouldn't think you need any. You can just connect the 2nd hard drive, format it, make sure it behaves 100% right out of the box - no bad sectors, no weird noises, no slowdowns etc.

Then, you can burn this CD with imgburn and use the "HDClone" tool which comes on it (untested, but heck - worst comes the worst you'll just have to format your new drive again if anything doesn't work right):
http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

Alternatively, you can boot from a CD like this:
http://www.ubcd4win.com/
(this one is a bit harder to build but just follow the instructions - it requires a windows xp installation CD for copyright purposes)

And then the latter boots you into a cd-bootable windows XP environment where you can simply use windows explorer to copy everything over to your new hard drive and then all you need to do is just install/fix the bootloader on your new disk using these steps:
1. Boot up with your Windows XP disc.
2. Select the option Recovery Console.
3. At the prompt, type "fdisk /mbr" (without the quotes of course)
4. Restart your computer.

Personally, I'd download UBCD and try HDClone first, because it seems like it'd be the easiest (and completely free) solution to your problem.

Hope it works out.

P.S. I assume you're using XP. If you're using Vista, the bootloader fix might be different, so look it up "how to fix vista bootloader" or "how to restore vista bootloader" or whatnot...
 
im not really looking for alot of space. i want enough to hold my games and os on it. i have a 10TB network drive that goes through my home network for storage stuff. as for programs i have about 400GB worth for programs and just wanted to leave myself a bit of room for new ones. the 1TB drive seems a little to much space for what i need. id rather have a larger cache even though its not a really noticable difference. i think a friend of mine has norton ghost. didnt know thats what it was for. :D
 
If you don't need the space, you clearly don't have the downloaded porn collection of some of these guys!
 
If you get a Seagate drive you can download a free full working version of Acronis right from Seagates site. But it only works if one of the drives is a Seagate or Maxtor.

Western Digital makes good IDE drives but there SATA drives I have found to be sub par. I am a Tech in a Mom and Pop Computer store and I see more WD drives go bad. Seagates also have a 5 year warranty as to some WD drives only having a 1 year warranty. The WD Black edition drives are their best drives though.
 
I've got a 500gb and a 750gb western digital caviar black, so far so good, i recommend gettin the one you posted
contrary to what halo says the caviar black has a 5 year warranty and the seagates mostly have 3 year warranties now (their new 7200.12 series)
 
In my experience, if parts last 1 year, they'll probably last for 5 anyway... but warranties are always nice.
 
Just avoid IBM Deathstars, umm I mean Deskstars.... They die rather reliably.
 
I decided to go with the 640GB Western Digital Caviar Black.
 
[quote1251848908=amazon3d]
Just avoid IBM Deathstars, umm I mean Deskstars.... They die rather reliably.
[/quote1251848908]

I'm using 3 Hitachi Deskstar 7K250's. (250GB). I've been using them for 3 years or so - no problems whatsoever (knock on wood). Maybe it's just luck.
 
i use hitachi HD for work. they are pretty stable never had any big problems with them but i like western digital. never once had a problem with one. i had an external drive that had a hitachi in it and it lasted about 3 weeks. But HD are like grab bags. Every now and then you get a girls grab bag mixxed in with the boys ones... :(
 
I run two of the Western Digital Caviar Black 640's in RAID 0. They rock so far.

hdtunebenchmarkintelraie.png

By soldier4real
 
yea thats pretty impressive. i might look into doing something like that myself.
 
It's really easy to setup. I was quite surprised that the drivers loaded automatically. Well as long as you have at least Vista SP1.
 
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