On Sat, Nov 19, 2011 at 8:32 PM, Jim March <1.jim.march@gmail.com> wrote:

Let me add some hard disk advice, regardless of whether you do IDE/PATA or SATA.

Laptop-class drives (2.5") are smaller and slower than a desktop-class drive (3.5"). BUT the laptop drives are much tougher, esp. in terms of drop-resistance, and put out a lot less heat.

You'll pay more for the gigabyte for a laptop-class drive.

If you're using a laptop IDE drive in a desktop computer, you need an adapter to make it work. Costs $5 at Fry's Electronics. On SATA drives the connectors are the same for laptop or desktop.

If you have a motherboard without SATA support, a SATA PCI adapter card is very cheap - about $20 tops (Fry's has tons). It can be a much, much better idea to buy a SATA drive plus PCI adapter now as opposed to an IDE drive for an older motherboard. By jumping to SATA right away you gain the ability to upgrade to a hotter SATA-support motherboard later. And usually, the SATA PCI adapter card will let you run a big SATA drive on a motherboard that doesn't otherwise support big IDE/PATA drives, because the SATA PCI adapter takes over a lot of the hard disk support firmware from the motherboard.

The best hard disks today are made by Western Digital, in my opinion. A very close second is Seagate. Comparatively speaking, the Japanese such as Hitachi, Toshiba and Fujitsu suck. In terms of reliability Samsungs from Korea are actually better than the Japanese drives. Maxtor is Seagate's "budget line" - avoid.

If you're buying an external drive that is NOT made by one of the above drive-makers (LaCie, Buffalo, SimpleTech, many MANY more) then you're buying a pig in a poke. You have no idea what brand of actual drive is in there unless you either crack the case open (breaking the warrantee most likely) or you use software tools to probe the make/model info. If however you buy a Western Digital external drive fr'instance, you can take it to the bank that there's a WD drive in there. Same concept for all the rest, except that Seagate owns Maxtor and might slap a Maxtor drive under a Seagate-brand chassis.

Hope this helps,

Jim

On Sat, Nov 19, 2011 at 7:18 PM, JD Austin <jd@twingeckos.com> wrote:

IDE, EIDE, and PATA (Parallel ATA) have the same interface.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_ATA

Older motherboards may have trouble recognizing larger drives.

IDE/EIDE/PATA is on it's way out.... get SATA if you have a choice since it's unlikely you'll find a motherboard with EIDE on it.

Open Box= someone else didn't like it.

I'd go SATA if I were you (supports native hot swapping).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA

I often use laptop drives for such things.

On Sat, Nov 19, 2011 at 18:48, Michael Havens <bmike1@gmail.com> wrote:

this is the ad:
http://www.macconnection.com/IPA/Shop/Product/Detail.htm?sku=8239542&cm_mmc=Base-_-8239542-_-Used-_-WN3&ci_src=14110944&ci_sku=8239542

On Sat, Nov 19, 2011 at 6:44 PM, Michael Havens <bmike1@gmail.com> wrote:

I have a sales guy telling me at http://www.macconnection.com/ that an eide drive (theirs) will work on an IDE system. Is this true. As stated before I don't know if my system is ide or eide. I have an IBM NetVista computer. This is what they're trying to sell:

Open Box Western Digital 160GB Caviar SE EIDE 3.5" Hard Drive - 8MB Cache

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:-)~MIKE~(-:

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:-)~MIKE~(-:

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