Buying a hard drive.

[Bender[OO]]

Before I decide to install linux I want to get a new hard drive so as to not lose all of the stuff I already have saved.

I've never shopped for a hard drive, and have never installed one. I'm looking to spend $50-$150, and I want an internal hdd.

The make of my motherboard is Gigabyte k8 Triton series nforce 4 (whatever the **** that all means) Is there anything else you need to know about my computer to help me?

I checked and my current hard drive is Maxtor Y....something something. Sooo will any Hard drive work with my mobo, does my mobo support more than 1 hard drive? I know I can fit the hard drive in my tower.

Any recommendations on which hard drive to buy, and which to stay away from? And when I buy one will I have all the necessary stuff to install it?

Thanks mucho.

 

[Syrillian]

That generation of Gigabyte MoBo should support both SATA and IDE

One of My Rigs has a K8 Triton VIA K8M800
It has 2 - SATA and 2 - IDE connections, yours is probably similar.

SATA = Serial Advanced Technology Attachment
IDE = Integrated Drive electronics

SATA is faster and the interface cable/connector is smaller (good for saving space).

A 80GB Hard Disk Drive is the smallest recommended today, 250GB is getting to be the norm. Below is an example:

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=101206-1

Shop around, you could probably get a better price.

BTW, which Linux OS are you installing?

 

[The Napster]

i agree, SATA is what you should get.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822152025

That is my hard drive, very good one, very fast, dependable. only problem is it can get a little hot sometimes.

 

[Bender[OO]]

Sata it is then. And The OS is Ubuntu.

 

[Bender[OO]]

When I buy it I'll buy the interface cable, and power cable serparately I believe. How do I know whether or not I'll be able to have another outlet on my PSU for the power cable? Do PSU's usually have more than 1?

 

[mophead740]

normally...

EDIT
if it doesnt then u can buy a splitter
as long as your PSU isnt a peice of junk it will have no adversary effects

 

[Nitestick]

ok SATA should be what you want as i have no doubt your board has SATA. try to make sure the Ubuntu version you download has the latest linux kernel possible as i have seen some buggy at best support for SATA in past kernels

 

[Bender[OO]]

I bought the hard drive today. It says sata 2 320 gb along with some other specs. I took out my other hard drive, put this new one in, and then installed windows xp x64 corporate on it. But now for some reason when I see the hard drive in my computer it says its capacity is only 127 gb???? Why wouldn't it say 320 gb?

 

[Alfredw1]

thats probably the most your motherboard supports. computers have a max on hard drive storage. for example: my old laptop only supports up to 60gigs so when i put in a 100gigs it only shows 60gigs. its weird no one told you about it here.

 

[Nitestick]

thats probably the most your motherboard supports.

given that it is a SATA drive and that SATA at it's release had fixes for all known barriers to date that is not the issue. it means you don't have a Service Pack. if you had either of the service packs it would have formatted it properly. you can use Partition Magic or similar software to format the rest of the space and merge it with what you already have.