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camaz

14 Posts

1791

February 20th, 2006 01:00

Second Hard Drive

I'm sure this is common knowledge to most users, but not to me.  I have a five year old Dimension 4300, that supports IDE (ATA/ATAPI) disc drives.  I have a 40GB installed, and would like to add a second hard drive for backup purposes.  What limitations do I have?  Can I use currently available larger capacity drives with designations like SATA?  Staples has a good deal right now on a Maxtor 200GB 7200RPM drive - is it compatible?  I can't seem to find a definitive answer on this question on the support sites.  Would appreciate an answer that this old man can understand.

shesagordie

10 Elder

 • 

46K Posts

February 20th, 2006 03:00

camaz
 
The D-4300 does not support SATA, unless you install a PCI SATA controller card, there would be no speed advantage to using SATA instead of IDE.
 
Try to buy either a Seagate, Western Digital, Samsung or Hitachi.  Maxtor is not a good buy at this time, due to high failure rates.  Also, check the lenght of the warranty, there's one to five years on hard drives.
 
You can use any IDE hard drive, up to120gb without a problem.
 
The following is a discussion about installing hard drives over 137gb in the D-4300,  you may find it informative, 
 
 
Bev.

shesagordie

10 Elder

 • 

46K Posts

February 21st, 2006 14:00

camaz

Pleased to have helped.

Bev.

camaz

14 Posts

February 21st, 2006 14:00

Thanks for the help, 'gordie.  As noted, Staple's special was on a Maxtor, so I'll wait for something else to come along.  Having had the experience of a failing hard drive (several years ago,  and a more recent spasmodic OS breakdown - last week - and I'm still rebuilding after OS reinstallation) I'm a convert - the entire hard drive's gotta be imaged.  The string you referred me to was very informative.  Thanks again.

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