[makai]

OK, I stayed up tonight and experimented with this installation some more and VIOLA! SUCCESS!

Both puny 40 GB hard drives are installed and working fine. The 2nd hard drive has been formatted and is ready for all the crap I'm going to put on it.

Thanks for all your help.

Greg

Excellent! Good work and preseverence! You were correct to select the 16 heads position for the jumper. If I recall, Win95 had a 32gb limit and so old drives had the capability of limiting the size via jumpers. I would have to look it up to verify, but I'm too lazy! ;-)

The only thing I would be concerned with is the date of the drive... 2002. Although I have never (knock on wood!) experienced a hard drive failure, I would keep an eye on any abnormalities... doesn't have to be a "constant eye", just be aware if you hear weird noises coming from the drive(s).

Talk to you later!

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OK, I stayed up tonight and experimented with this installation some more and VIOLA! SUCCESS!

Both puny 40 GB hard drives are installed and working fine. The 2nd hard drive has been formatted and is ready for all the crap I'm going to put on it.

Thanks for all your help.

Greg

Excellent! Good work and preseverence! You were correct to select the 16 heads position for the jumper. If I recall, Win95 had a 32gb limit and so old drives had the capability of limiting the size via jumpers. I would have to look it up to verify, but I'm too lazy! ;-)

The only thing I would be concerned with is the date of the drive... 2002. Although I have never (knock on wood!) experienced a hard drive failure, I would keep an eye on any abnormalities... doesn't have to be a "constant eye", just be aware if you hear weird noises coming from the drive(s).

Talk to you later!

I'll certainly do that. I just might have to buy a 300 GB hard drive here soon and do it all over again, LOL (now that I know how). That should stop the 'puny' cracks

[Webslinger64]

OK, I stayed up tonight and experimented with this installation some more and VIOLA! SUCCESS!

Both puny 40 GB hard drives are installed and working fine. The 2nd hard drive has been formatted and is ready for all the crap I'm going to put on it.

Thanks for all your help.

Greg

Excellent! Good work and preseverence! You were correct to select the 16 heads position for the jumper. If I recall, Win95 had a 32gb limit and so old drives had the capability of limiting the size via jumpers. I would have to look it up to verify, but I'm too lazy! ;-)

The only thing I would be concerned with is the date of the drive... 2002. Although I have never (knock on wood!) experienced a hard drive failure, I would keep an eye on any abnormalities... doesn't have to be a "constant eye", just be aware if you hear weird noises coming from the drive(s).

Talk to you later!

I'll certainly do that. I just might have to buy a 300 GB hard drive here soon and do it all over again, LOL (now that I know how). That should stop the 'puny' cracks

[makai]

I'll certainly do that. I just might have to buy a 300 GB hard drive here soon and do it all over again, LOL (now that I know how). That should stop the 'puny' cracks

If you do, buy from Newegg... they normally have the best prices, and their shipping is excellent. It's the only place I shop for computer stuff!

[PedroDaGR8]

The date of that drive is not the only thing to be scared of. That is an IBM deskstar drive. Some of the WORST drives ever made. They were so bad and such a problem that IBM ended up selling their HD division to Hitachi (which is why Hitachi now makes drives with the DeskStar moniker, though Hitachi solved all of the problems).

Now about the drives. They got the nickname DeathStars for how often they died (both their desktops and their laptops, I lost 4 laptop HDs of the same type to the click of death). Something was wrong with the drives and it would cause a catasrophic head crash that would actuallly SHAVE THE MAGNETIC MATERIAL off the drive. This link here shows the analysis of a DeathStar head crash including the platters that have been rendered see through because of all of the material being shaved right off.

My advice make FREQUENT backups and know that ANY drive will be better than this one honestly.

I hate trashing your drive after all the flack you got for it but these drives are DANGEROUS TO DATA.

Edited by PedroDaGR8, 06 January 2009 - 02:12 PM.

[Webslinger64]

The date of that drive is not the only thing to be scared of. That is an IBM deskstar drive. Some of the WORST drives ever made. They were so bad and such a problem that IBM ended up selling their HD division to Hitachi (which is why Hitachi now makes drives with the DeskStar moniker, though Hitachi solved all of the problems).

Now about the drives. They got the nickname DeathStars for how often they died (both their desktops and their laptops, I lost 4 laptop HDs of the same type to the click of death). Something was wrong with the drives and it would cause a catasrophic head crash that would actuallly SHAVE THE MAGNETIC MATERIAL off the drive. This link here shows the analysis of a DeathStar head crash including the platters that have been rendered see through because of all of the material being shaved right off.

My advice make FREQUENT backups and know that ANY drive will be better than this one honestly.

I hate trashing your drive after all the flack you got for it but these drives are DANGEROUS TO DATA.

Alright, you've convinced me. Thanks to this forum, I've learned to reformat a hard drive, install all relevant hardware drivers, and reinstall my Windows XP (done that twice now). I'm gonna bite the bullet and get myself a kick(_/_), seriously big hard drive. Pedro, if you've got recommendations I'd sure like to hear them. Lets say something 160 GB or larger. How about Western Digital? I seem to see that name quite a bit. If you know a good website to purchase from please don't hesitate to recommend.

Lastly, when buying a new hard drive, are there certain specifications that I should be looking for? I have a Pentium 4, 1.8 GHz/512 MB/533 Mhz/2 GB RAM. Despite the age of my PC, can I still run the latest hard drives out there?

Thanks,

Greg

[Webslinger64]

If somebody could take a look at the following link (this is a previous post to this thread)

http://www.geekstogo...n....html&st=45

and look at post #54. That's a pic of my PC. I have had a crash course in PC 101 thanks to this forum and I want to review a couple of things. The six white slots are PCI slots right? What the heck do you call the single brown slot, AGP? Also, what is the difference between a PCI slot and a PCI Express slot?

[PedroDaGR8]

You are correct. White = PCI and Brown = AGP. PCIExpress is a new standard that uses a serial architecture (meaning point to point), while with PCI the full bandwidth is shared across ALL the devices on the bus. PCIExpress comes in various varieties based on the number of lanes (point to point connections) a PCIex1 is a single lane connection, PCIex4 has four lanes for that connection, PCIex8 has 8 lanes and PCIex16 has 16 lanes at that connection. The way it is designed you can plug an x8 card in a x16 slot and it will only use the 8 lanes.

I'll see if I can come up with some pictures that explain it better.

Edited by PedroDaGR8, 06 January 2009 - 03:50 PM.

[Webslinger64]

You are correct. White = PCI and Brown = AGP. PCIExpress is a new standard that uses a serial architecture (meaning point to point), while with PCI the full bandwidth is shared across ALL the devices on the bus. PCIExpress comes in various varieties based on the number of lanes (point to point connections) a PCIex1 is a single lane connection, PCIex4 has four lanes for that connection, PCIex8 has 8 lanes and PCIex16 has 16 lanes at that connection. The way it is designed you can plug an x8 card in a x16 slot and it will only use the 8 lanes.

I'll see if I can come up with some pictures that explain it better.

You did a good job of explaining it and I'm almost there understanding it, LOL. No really! If you come up with some pics that would be great.

So, PCI is like broadband access to the Internet, you may end up sharing it with a few or lots depending on how many are accessing the service at any given time, while PCI Express is like a dedicated connection to the Internet without sharing that connection with anyone?

[makai]

Lastly, when buying a new hard drive, are there certain specifications that I should be looking for? I have a Pentium 4, 1.8 GHz/512 MB/533 Mhz/2 GB RAM. Despite the age of my PC, can I still run the latest hard drives out there?

Your motherboard only supports IDE (PATA) drives. You cannot install SATA drives without adding some type of SATA converter/controller card... not recommend. Besides, SATA controllers/converters can sometimes be a pain to use and setup... just search this forum and you'll see! Stick with PATA and when you build your very own super-duper computer, go with SATA.

These are the PATA drives Newegg offers. I personally use Seagate in my desktops (SATA versions). In my laptops, I run all Western Digital PATA drives. They are both good vendors, and really you can't go wrong with either. Because the drives are relatively cheap at Newegg, I wouldn't bother trying to save any money on ebay. Newegg is very good with RMAs.

PedroDaGR8 wrote...
I hate trashing your drive after all the flack you got

Hey... that wasn't flack! That was fact!!!

[PedroDaGR8]

That's a great analogy. PCI is limited to 133MB/sec across ALL devices.

The only addedum to your analogy is that while PCIe x1 has one direct connection, PCIe x16 has SIXTEEN direct connections and therefore Sixteen times the bandwidth of a x1 connection.

The below shows an illustration of the various sizes of PCIexpress sockets. If you look one side (the left side) of the socket grows while the other (the right side) does not. The side that gets wider is the side that caries all of the lanes. The other side caries power and related things that do not need to grow with the number of lanes. Note though that these are illustrated backwards to how they would appear on a motherboard which you can see in the next link.

http://www.naplestec...ie_slots400.gif

This link shows some real world examples (in yellow):
http://en.wikipedia....:PCIExpress.jpg

The top is a PCIe x4
The next is a PCIe x16
The third is a PCIe x1
The fourth is a PCIe x16
The last is a PCI slot as a comparison for size.

Notice how the right side (in the illustration above) is now on the left side (closest to the edge of the motherboard).

As for HD's WD or Seagate are great drives and I second newegg. I use them all the time and they are VERY reliable.

Edited by PedroDaGR8, 06 January 2009 - 06:26 PM.

[Webslinger64]

That's a great analogy. PCI is limited to 133MB/sec across ALL devices.

The only addedum to your analogy is that while PCIe x1 has one direct connection, PCIe x16 has SIXTEEN direct connections and therefore Sixteen times the bandwidth of a x1 connection.

The below shows an illustration of the various sizes of PCIexpress sockets. If you look one side (the left side) of the socket grows while the other (the right side) does not. The side that gets wider is the side that caries all of the lanes. The other side caries power and related things that do not need to grow with the number of lanes. Note though that these are illustrated backwards to how they would appear on a motherboard which you can see in the next link.

http://www.naplestec...ie_slots400.gif

This link shows some real world examples (in yellow):
http://en.wikipedia....:PCIExpress.jpg

The top is a PCIe x4
The next is a PCIe x16
The third is a PCIe x1
The fourth is a PCIe x16
The last is a PCI slot as a comparison for size.

Notice how the right side (in the illustration above) is now on the left side (closest to the edge of the motherboard).

As for HD's WD or Seagate are great drives and I second newegg. I use them all the time and they are VERY reliable.

Great instruction. Seeing it in a pic is worth a thousand words. Thanks for the recommendations on the hard drive brands.

[Webslinger64]

Alrighty, snatched up a Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3160815A 160GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache IDE Ultra ATA100 Hard Drive - OEM from New Egg. All I can say is here I go again

3rd time's a charm

[PedroDaGR8]

Hahaha good luck you should have it all ironed out though by now.

[makai]

Have fun Greg! I don't think you'll need anymore help from here on out!

[Webslinger64]

Hahaha good luck you should have it all ironed out though by now.

Definitely, thanks!