TR Forums

Meself · Sun Nov 03, 2002 5:35 am

I’m looking to replace my now dead 4.3gb H/D.

My M/B (PC CHIPS M729) won’t accept anything larger than a new 10gb H/D with a 5400 spin speed. Price wise it appears there’s hardly any difference between say 7.5gb and 10gb so I may as well go for one of this size, as even the 4.3gb H/D are nearly the same price.

I’ve looked at (WD75AA 7.5GB IDE) (MAXTOR 541DX 10GB) and (Seagate ST310211A 10GB) all of which appear to be old (almost ancient) obsolete or discontinued models.

Does anyone know of any more up to-date small H/D’s and also how can I find out if the drives that I am looking at are “old stock” as the manufacturers web sites never give you this info.

Cheers

pattouk2001 · Sun Nov 03, 2002 7:19 am

Hi there. Your going to find it very hard indeed to come accross a new 10gb HDD, unless you look far and wide, or if you can get one second hand. The smallest new drive your gonna get is a 20gb drive, but even thoes are starting to become increasingly difficult to obtain. What CPU does your Motherboard take, I'm not a PC-Chips fan, so my general knowlege on them is pretty lame. Cheers.

Meself · Sun Nov 03, 2002 7:49 am

Hi pattouk2001

Thanks for the quick reply

I’ve just spent almost two days solid searching on google for drives that I could also find some sort of independent review on, without any success at all.

I’m running a P233 and as it’s my old system, which I like to keep running for the missus I don’t really need to upgrade to a large drive.

I hear what your say about PC Chips as initially even trying to get any info on the board was a struggle (but there again I am a bit of a tech dunce…..slowly learning all the time though) and you guys in here helped me with that.

Cheers

pattouk2001 · Sun Nov 03, 2002 8:37 am

Hi mate. Ok, I was gonna suggest upgrading the board, but as you have an old Socket 7 P233mhz CPU, it wouldn't be an effective solution to your problem. Your best bet mate is to scout around for either a limited stock of 10gb drives, or more likely, second hand drives. When looking for drives, do avoid Seagate drives, as their drives of that era suffered horribly from heat problems due to very poor bearings, and thus after several months, failed, which isn't good, as you'll be back to squre one sooner than you may of wanted to. Also, stay away from Fujitsu's too of this era, as most 10gb Fujitsu's would of been manufactured between March and August of 2001, and these drives prooved to be a faulty batch, and the failer rate of these drives were very high indeed, they lasted about a year and then failed! Your best bet would be to go for a Maxtor, Western Digital, or a lesser Samsung. Maxtor's and Western Digital's are very realiable and fast drives, and should last you several years, Samsung drives are a sorta mid-range drive, their not excellent, nor crap, but they just plod along quite reliably. Anyway, post back in and let us know what you find and what you finally plump for. Cheers.

Meself · Sun Nov 03, 2002 8:50 am

Hi pattouk2001

You are indeed a star…………….your warning re Seagate and Fujitsu's of this area is most timely as I’ve been looking at a Seagate on eBay and was getting tempted……………no wonder the price was quite good £33 uk pounds all inc.

Maxtor and WD are on there as well albeit slightly dearer………………I’ll let you know what I go for.

Many, many thanks

Cheers

pattouk2001 · Sun Nov 03, 2002 9:02 am

Hi there. S'ok mate, no worries, we like to assis here at the TR, please do let me know what you plup for, see ya for now. Cheers.

farfolen · Sun Nov 03, 2002 9:14 am

you're not going to find many new drives. I suggest you go with a WD drive though. from what i've read they're some of the most dependable, so even a refurbished one would maybe have a few years left in it. you're going to have to face the facts though, man...that comp needs upgrading. even if it's just to a cheapo low-end system now, you should save your money to build a new one now, cause in a few years (or sooner) when the drive you're buying now fails, you're going to have to do this again...only then it will be harder and more of a hassle. anyways, get the WD if you want, and i wish you luck finding one.

Mon Nov 04, 2002 2:46 pm

You can also buy a PCI IDE controller card for your computer. The card will let you run bigger drives than your board supports. I am currently running a card with a 20G hard drive on my old P1 233 vintage system, and have had zero problems with it. This may be a solution to keep your system functional for a while longer.

Meself · Mon Nov 04, 2002 5:03 pm

farfolen

Aye the comp needs upgrading all right, however it’s only my old (first) one so I’m hesitant to spend to much dosh on as I’ve an Athlon to do the bizz with.

Starfalcon

I’ve looked at that………………….good idea…………………..just got to make my mind up now whether to change the M/B while I’m at it

Thanks a lot for all the input everyone

fink · Mon Nov 04, 2002 5:35 pm

I pick up new, sub-10 Gb drives at a local computer fair that comes around about every 2 months. One of the vendors there has a huge supply of obsolete equipment. WD or maxtor drives seem to work best with minimum of failures. You can often find computer dismantlers who will have used drives for sale.

farfolen · Mon Nov 04, 2002 7:50 pm

star, would that card allow me to support higher transfer rates than my m/b supports? i ask because my current board only supports ATA 33, possibly 66.

Tue Nov 05, 2002 9:53 pm

Yes the card will support faster drives, the cards bios does the support so it does not matter what your board supports. Also if your board has a size limit on the drives it supports, you can use the card to get around that also. Just like the 20G drive I am running in my vintage box, the board only supports 2G drives with ATA-33, so I got the card to update it. I have 2 Promise ATA-133 cards in my gaming box so that all my drives are on seperate channels. I get very good speed on all the drives. My board did not at first support ATA-133 which is why I got the cards, but a bios update did change it to ATA-133 support, but I just run my CD drives off the board so it does not matter. Get the card and you will get much better performance out of it then your onboard channels. Plus when you install windows, the card bios will give you full ATA-133 speed and not be stuck with pio so windows installs real fast.

Meself · Wed Nov 06, 2002 5:22 am

Just ordered a Western Digital 102AA 10.2gb on eBay. £32 UK pounds inc p&p…… not the newest of drives but reliable.

Never fitted one before, so no doubt I’ll be posting back in here asking for help

Thanks for all the advice folks :wink:

Wed Nov 06, 2002 7:55 pm

Good luck with the drive, hope it works out well for you. Glad to help you out.

Wed Nov 06, 2002 11:14 pm

Meself wrote:
Just ordered a Western Digital 102AA 10.2gb on eBay. £32 UK pounds inc p&p…… not the newest of drives but reliable.

Never fitted one before, so no doubt I’ll be posting back in here asking for help

Thanks for all the advice folks

We got a buch of those at work a few years back, they're not bad for a 5400 RPM drive. I suppose I should say that a quarter of them went bad the first few months we had them, though I'm pretty sure it was a fluke. My theory is still that the guys in the Buy.com warehouse were playing forklift polo with them...

Coldfirex · Wed Nov 06, 2002 11:21 pm

how can your mobo not support a hd with a 7200rpm? shouldnt matter should it?

Wed Nov 06, 2002 11:22 pm

Coldfirex wrote:
how can your mobo not support a hd with a 7200rpm? shouldnt matter should it?

Nope, shouldn't matter at all.

HowardDrake · Thu Nov 07, 2002 12:12 am

And the Intel 430TX chipset supported big drives no problem. I have a P233 XTerm that has a 20G drive running off the host controller with no worries. So that's another bit of advice, albeit a bit late for this problem.

Blahpony · Thu Nov 07, 2002 1:15 am

If youre running NT, 2000 or XP you can use a larger drive. Just make a 5gig partition on the drive. Install the os on this partition. Once in Winders, use disk mananger to partition and format the rest of the drive. I have used this to put 40+ gig drive in systems where the bios only sees 8.4 gig. Not the most elegant solution, but it works.

TR Forums

NEW SMALL H/D's...Recommendations please

NEW SMALL H/D's...Recommendations please

CPU?

Here we go..

S'ok

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