[strikermed]

Hey guys,

I'm looking to build an external hard drive. I want to have on the external enclosure 2 Firewire ports, and a USB port, along with an On/Off switch. I'm wondering if anyone can suggest one that is 50 dollars or cheaper.

I also have an 80 gig, and 150 gig hard drive inside my computer. What I want to do is buy a new SATA hardrive: http://www.zipzoomfl...tCode=101205-11 and put that inplace of my operating system Hard Drive (80 gig). I'm wondering how I can do this. I want to get a faster drive as my operating hard drive so it speeds up my computer a little bit. Is there a way to easily make a duplicate of my 80 gig hard drive onto the SATA hard drive, and then declare the SATA hard drive as my boot hard drive? And I'm wondering if that is a good idea to just take the 80 gig then and put it in the external enclosure... The enclosed hardrive will be used for video editing at my college... That's why I need fire wire, and that's why i want to just put the 80 gig in there.

I also wanted to know if that hard drive (SATA) woudl be compatible with my motherboard.

You can see my computer specs below.

Thanks guys, you are always a big help.

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I guess it didn't who my specs, here they are if you can't see them.

Pow Max Case
Athalon 64 X2 4200
ABIT KN8 Series
ATI Radeon X800 GTO
PCI Sound Audigy 2 Card
PCI Firewire Card
PCI Wireless Card
5.1 Surround Sound
80 GB IDE OS Hardrive 7200 RPM 8mb cache (seagate)
160 GB IDE Storage Hardrive 7200 RPM 8mb cache (Western Digital)
2 GB Ram (dual Channel) pc3200 (1gig each)
Combo Drive
DVD Burner
Ultra 500 Watt modular Powersupply

[strikermed]

I guess it didn't who my specs, here they are if you can't see them.

Pow Max Case
Athalon 64 X2 4200
ABIT KN8 Series
ATI Radeon X800 GTO
PCI Sound Audigy 2 Card
PCI Firewire Card
PCI Wireless Card
5.1 Surround Sound
80 GB IDE OS Hardrive 7200 RPM 8mb cache (seagate)
160 GB IDE Storage Hardrive 7200 RPM 8mb cache (Western Digital)
2 GB Ram (dual Channel) pc3200 (1gig each)
Combo Drive
DVD Burner
Ultra 500 Watt modular Powersupply

[james_8970]

A new hard drive won't speed up your computer.
Also I have yet to see a enclosure with and firewire or USB ports, the on/off switch is standard.
James

[Titan8990]

Your board has four 1.5gb/s SATA ports. You can get a 3gb/s SATA drive but it will only run at 1.5gb/s

[strikermed]

Thanks, those pretty much answer my question... It will be pointless to go and do the hard work when it won't make much of a difference.

Gonna get a http://www.zipzoomfl...e=101258-16-RFB (External HD MY Book) and stick with the 2 hard drives that are in my computer currently.

[Titan8990]

I just wanted to point out that it says that HDD is "refurbished". The warrenty reads as follows:

Warranty Length: One year manufacturer warranty beginning from the manufacturing date.

[strikermed]

Thanks for noticing that, I saw that too earlier today... I think I might go for a 320 gig for the same price... I rather not get a refurbished product...

[Titan8990]

I recommend either Tigerdirect.com or Newegg.com over zipzoomfly.com. There prices are typically much cheaper. I have heard good things about tiger direct's refurbished products. I wouldn't recommend a used HDD though because it has mechanical parts and they always eventually wear out.

[Tyger]

If you switch from a PATA drive to an SATA you will notice a difference in things like web browsing where you pull cached files off the hard drive. It won't speed up uploading or downloading, it will speed up somewhat other processes. It all depends on what the limiting factors are for a given process.

If you have the hard drive you can go to the maker's website and download the installation software and burn it as a image to a CD. Then you can image your 80gb drive to your new one. I would highly recommend that method, then you can salt the old drive away as a backup or use it as a slave. A new drive should come with a software disk. If not you can download and burn Clonezilla to a CD and use it.