SATA Frustrations

[frogtalk]

OK, I am not the technical one in the family, but we are trying to add a second internal hard drive into our Dell Dimension 8300. We had bought a WD 250 gig EIDE hard drive, plugged it into an open slot, but the computer NEVER recognized the hard drive, even though it was in a EIDE slot. Then we looked at our original Hard drive, and saw that it was SATA. So now we're thinking that we need to get a SATA hard drive. The problem is, my husband has been looking for which one to get, and apparently there are several different SATA connections out there. How on earth do I find out which SATA connection I have?

And any recommendations for a good 250+ gig hard drive would be appreciated.

By the way, our Dell has 1 gig DDR RAM, a 120 gig hard drive, integrated sound (not the cheapest card, but not a high end one either) and a 128 MB Video card.

Thanks for the help!!

 

[desiboi]

You cant have a high end car din a Dell...

 

[simplechords]

Did you format the drive that you bought? After you plug it all in you still have to format it before the computer will reconize it.

 

[PZEROFGH]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822148065

heres a nice 250GB sata150 hdd for 111

 

[frogtalk]

Well, we tried to format the hard drive, but the computer didn't even recognize the device to be formatted.

Is there more than one SATA format? Or is it the same format just with different numbers on it for speed?

 

[bronxblaza117]

u have to go into bios and "turn it on", then windows will recognize the HD

 

[cedjunior]

You cant have a high end car din a Dell...

What does that have to do with anything???


Anyway, the most common SATA drives are SATA150, so thats probably what you have. But yes, you will have to get into the BIOS, when you restart your computer and the dell splash screen comes up press what ever key it say to enter set up, then enable the drive in the bios.

 

[frogtalk]

As it turned out, we had bought the wrong hard drive to begin with. We had and EIDE hard drive, but it had the wrong number of wires to go wtih our cable.. however it worked.

How can we tell which number of SATA pins we have without opening the case and counting (if I can see the pins) and how can we find out what is the max speed we can get for a new hard drive. 100, 150, 300.... it's all technicalese to me

Thanks!!

 

[cedjunior]

Just find out the make/model# of the hard driver you currently have, google it and find out the specs, then buy another one with similar specs.