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*DAMN R6 Community => Tech Talk => Topic started by: BTs_GhostSniper on March 04, 2005, 08:41:01 pm



Title: I Need a New Hard Drive...what do I get?
Post by: BTs_GhostSniper on March 04, 2005, 08:41:01 pm
Okay, after copying every CD I own onto my hard drive in full-quality AIFF format (the same format used on commercial CD's), I have decided I am in need of a new hard drive.  I used up 150GB of my current 250GB internal hard drive.  I'm not sure what the speed difference would be between the internal Serial ATA drive and an external FireWire hard drive, so that is information I really need to determine which way I want to go.  The money doesn't matter.  And both the internal or external hard drive would be 7200rpm.  Just the speed of the connection would be the only difference I'm assuming.

So, any suggestions?


Title: Re: I Need a New Hard Drive...what do I get?
Post by: Typhy on March 04, 2005, 08:43:19 pm
Externals are a pain in the ass. Better to fill your internal slots before you buy one.


Title: Re: I Need a New Hard Drive...what do I get?
Post by: BTs_GhostSniper on March 04, 2005, 08:52:57 pm
Externals are a pain in the ass. Better to fill your internal slots before you buy one.

Do you know which is faster?


Title: Re: I Need a New Hard Drive...what do I get?
Post by: BTs_GhostSniper on March 04, 2005, 09:20:13 pm
Okay, I can get a Hitachi 400GB internal for $369 or a Hitachi or WesternDigital 250GB for around $150 (all internal Serial ATA).  Anybody have any opinions on which company makes a better drive?


Title: Re: I Need a New Hard Drive...what do I get?
Post by: seth on March 04, 2005, 09:43:50 pm
serial ATA is faster than FW 400 but should be the same as FW 800. It all depends what you wanna do with that HD. For storage, go with the external.

As for the price, i would go with the cheaper, the reputation of the major HD manufacturers being the same.


Title: Re: I Need a New Hard Drive...what do I get?
Post by: BTs_GhostSniper on March 04, 2005, 10:07:14 pm
Well, I decided on the Internal WesternDigital 250GB Serial ATA drive for $165.  I also picked up the ATi Radeon 9800 Pro 256MB G5 edition video card for $299.  Got them both with overnight shipping from MacSolutions.com for under $500 so I'm happy.  I'll have them tomorrow and should have them installed tomorrow night when I get home from work.  I can't wait!  It'll be like having a whole new computer!

By the way, thanks everyone for your advice.  I ended up catching Saberian on instant messenger and getting some advice from him on the WesternDigital internal drive.

Peace.

-GhostSniper Out.


Title: Re: I Need a New Hard Drive...what do I get?
Post by: BFG on March 05, 2005, 06:49:11 pm
Excellent choice, Ive got no complaints with the Western Digital drives, and apart from one defect platter ive not had any problems on any of my WD Drives :)

Radeon 256 for $299 sounds rather cheap!! How much more expensive is that new ATI card?


Title: Re: I Need a New Hard Drive...what do I get?
Post by: Civrock on March 05, 2005, 06:51:16 pm
the x800? about double as much...


Title: Re: I Need a New Hard Drive...what do I get?
Post by: BTs_GhostSniper on March 05, 2005, 06:56:15 pm
Radeon 256 for $299 sounds rather cheap!! How much more expensive is that new ATI card?

It was $499.  It's the Radeon X800 XT and although it might have a bit better video performance, it is still a 256MB AGP 8X card, just like the 9800 Pro.  If it at least had more Video RAM I might have spent the extra $200, but I just couldn't see the value.


Title: Re: I Need a New Hard Drive...what do I get?
Post by: *DAMN Mauti on March 05, 2005, 07:20:34 pm
The value of the X800 is the following: http://www.barefeats.com/radx800.html It can almost double the framerates the 9800 produces. Well of course it makes only sense if you have at very least a 2.0 Dual G5.

However nonetheless the 9800 is a very good card fairly priced.

About extern or not - my experience was excellent with FW disks. Of course they are slower but especially for MP3 storage they are suited perfect. However if you have a spot free in your G5 of course use this first because it's faster and cheaper!

About S-ATA and FW800: S-ATA has a theoratical bandwith of 1500 Mbit and FW800 has 800MBit. Well currently the fastest single HD(a SCSI one) can produce speeds of 93MB/s. IDE are noticably slower. So in all cases currently FW800 would be enough as long as you don't want to setup high speed raids.

Bye,

Mauti


Title: Re: I Need a New Hard Drive...what do I get?
Post by: BTs_Lee.Harvey on March 06, 2005, 10:41:42 pm
Well.. I wish i could have gotten to this thread b4 GS ordered the HD.. I got a wester Digital 250gb HD last year..and its alreay failing on me.. personaly I would have gotten the hitachi 400gb hd if it was out then. I have seen the hitachi HD's go through some shit and still work (ie... dumping a large bottle of soda on the powerbook and all over the internal HD and it still works 2 years l8ter.. computer on about 20 hr a day)


Title: Re: I Need a New Hard Drive...what do I get?
Post by: BTs_GhostSniper on March 08, 2005, 12:12:32 am
Well.. I wish i could have gotten to this thread b4 GS ordered the HD.. I got a wester Digital 250gb HD last year..and its alreay failing on me.. personaly I would have gotten the hitachi 400gb hd if it was out then. I have seen the hitachi HD's go through some shit and still work (ie... dumping a large bottle of soda on the powerbook and all over the internal HD and it still works 2 years l8ter.. computer on about 20 hr a day)

Actually, I didn't get my stuff on Saturday like I was supposed to.  They called me back later to tell me that everything was on backorder.  So I still have time to change my mind.  ;D


Title: Re: I Need a New Hard Drive...what do I get?
Post by: BTs_Mysterio on March 08, 2005, 05:00:31 am
Western Digital is the only HD maker I buy from. I never have had any problems with them, but yea SATA is the way to go. If you want external, there are PCI SATA cards so you can do external SATA enclosed HDs.


Title: Re: I Need a New Hard Drive...what do I get?
Post by: seth on March 08, 2005, 09:22:43 pm
does anybody has a network hard drive (thru ethernet) plugged to the router ? I'm wondering how handy this is, if you're using your airport connection to access the disk.


Title: Re: I Need a New Hard Drive...what do I get?
Post by: BTs_Mysterio on March 11, 2005, 12:36:21 am
Radeon 256 for $299 sounds rather cheap!! How much more expensive is that new ATI card?

It was $499.  It's the Radeon X800 XT and although it might have a bit better video performance, it is still a 256MB AGP 8X card, just like the 9800 Pro.  If it at least had more Video RAM I might have spent the extra $200, but I just couldn't see the value.

I know I missed this a long which back. However, I thought I should say that the pipelines are better in the X800 and it has faster clock/memory speeds. Luckily for you Unreal Engine 3 is confirmed to be able to run on anything better than a 6600 GT easily. Also in the gaming hardware news is that PPUs will soon be a requirement for real quality. That of course is a Physics Processing Unit. There are new engines being built with this in mind and dual-core CPUs. Unreal engine 3 will use both.


Title: Re: I Need a New Hard Drive...what do I get?
Post by: crypt on March 12, 2005, 11:36:08 pm
I can't wait to see what the Unreal 3 engine is gonna be capable of. I'll be rocking games with that on Xbox 2/Next.


Title: Re: I Need a New Hard Drive...what do I get?
Post by: BTs_Mysterio on March 12, 2005, 11:59:08 pm
I still feel console gaming is much more... impersonal. Not enough out of game interaction.