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Selecting a Hard Drive
My Dell XPS Gen. 2 was factory equipped with two 120 GB Seagate SATA ST3120026AS (7200 rpm) internal serial drives. They were not connected in RAID configuration. One was my boot (C:/) drive. The other (D:/) I used as a backup drive. The D:/ drive has failed. My optios to replace it are either another internal serial SATA (120 - 250 GB) or an external Firewire drive. I preferr the Firewire.
There are so many makes and models, search was somewhat confusing. Can anyone suggest a comparable or better Drive?
NoBootJack
Message Edited by NoBootJack on 06-14-2008 12:29 AM
osprey4
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June 14th, 2008 12:00
You're aware, of course, than an external drive is always going to be slower than an internal drive, right?
Pretty much all external drives are about the same. Seagate gets most of the votes in this forum because they have the longest warranty.
tr4
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June 14th, 2008 12:00
My suggestion is to buy a generic external enclosure for your existing C: drive. Buy a new larger drive to use as your c:, copy the image from your old to new, move the old to the external.
Reasoning is one drive failed, it is the same age and had less activity than the c. the c may never fail but the odds are not in your favor. The new drives have bigger buffers and more capacity.
NoBootJack
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June 14th, 2008 15:00
tr4,
Very good idea tr4. The only issue I see is that if I use the old drive as the backup it would lack the capacity to backup the new larger drive, especially since I usually have several backups. I suppose I could use part of the new drive for backup space or even partition the new drive and use the partitioned space for some of my backups.
Out of the 120 GB capacity of my boot drive I'm currently using about 35 GB. When the computer was new I started with 8 GB used. The way Windows updates keep gobbling up space and media files keep getting larger, I suspect the 35 GB will grow fast.
NoBootJack
NoBootJack
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June 14th, 2008 15:00
osprey4,
Thanks for responding to my inquiry. Well, my gut feeling was that the internal drive would be faster, but you just confirmed it. Is there any data on how much faster an internal SATA would be compared to an external Firewire SATA?
The thing that was on my mind when I said I was confused is whether or not there is more than one standard that applies to the internal SATA port or more than one standard that applies to the IEEE 1394 Firewire port and If I needed to be sure the drive I buy is compatible to my port standards.
tr4
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June 14th, 2008 17:00
I agree that an internal drive would be faster. But Since it is a backup and not an active drive, the speed is not as important plus the ability to offsite it has lots of value. I discourage people from adding externals to be used as a daily data drive.
The 120 will do 3 backups for you so that should be enough for awhile. A guess a 160 or 250 would be a good size. And if you end up filling it up, you could make the 250 a backup and get a new c:
osprey4
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June 14th, 2008 17:00
Any desktop SATA drive will be a simple swap for your old drive.
I'd advise caution with an external enclosure. Some of them work perfectly, but others.....