questions regarding hard drive ports

[wannabe_hacker]

i am sort of a noob at this stuff. I want to buy a new hard drive for a dell dimension desktop. This is an old desktop. It came with I think Windows 98.

anyway, the hard drive is only 4 gb, so i think you know why i want a new one. I go online to buy a new hard drive and they're asking me what port does it use.

I have no idea. I think it's SCSI, but im not sure. so i would appreciate any help. Thanks

 

[mrzeeedler]

Its going to be an ide drive. Scsi is the fastest available to date i dont think thats it. Then comes serial ata and raid which is only on new machines. So its a eide drive. You can check them out here. This is good cheap place to buy from. I reccomend this one myself.

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?description=22-140-118&depa=1

 

[wannabe_hacker]

Well it is connected to the motherboard. mrzeeedler, thanks for the info. I will keep what you said in mind. I didn't know any of that stuff. And by the way, newegg is where I went looking for the hard drive. So I agree, that site is definitely recommendable.

And MicroBell, thanks also. I KNOW now that it is IDE by what you said.

I don't know what a PCI card is, but I know my drive is connected to the motherboard. The reason I thought it was SCSI is because I thought that was what most computers used. Again, thanks for the help!

 

[mrzeeedler]

nope most computers use ide drives. Now a lot are switching to serial ata hard drives and raid. Hopefully soon we can get over to the super fast scsi as a standard.

 

[wannabe_hacker]

Now what does SCSI usually come with. I mean is it common in all new computers or customized computers for gaming like Alienware or something else. And does EIDE and IDE mean the same?

I found a WD 40 GB 7200 RMP w/ avg seek - 8.9 ms and 2 mb buffer for $51.00. Is this a good price? If you have any suggestions on what brand or whatever kind of hard drive I should look into, let me know. Appreciate it

 

[mrzeeedler]

okay i will try and break it down a little bit more. ide and eide mean the same thing. 51 bucks is a good price. Their a few major manufactures of hard drives and thats western digital, seagate, and maxtor. Now while people swear by them all I have only used western digital and probably will only use western digital unless i buy the seagate cheetah scsi 15 rpm hard drive. Now hard drives connected through scsi and serial ata (sata) generally spin at 7200 rpm. While connected through scsi or raid (small ribbon cable) spin at 10,000 rpm. ALso scsi is available in 15000 rpm also. Scsi can be connected through a "pci" card (see those 5 white slots on your motherboard, those are where pci cards are plugged in) or plugged directly into the motherboard that is compatible for it. Generally only server motherboards and dual cpu motherboards are equipped with this conncetion. Raid is a connection that can be configured in several differnt ways. Most of which im not even sure about out. I hope this helps out a little bit.

 

[wannabe_hacker]

Okay, that's all I needed to know. Thanks