Bare drive setup

[lations]

Hi, I just had a hard drive failure. I had 2 150GB velociraptor HDDs in raid 0 and one died. I want to get 2 600GB velociraptors and put them in raid 0 as replacement.

My Problem: Don't understand what the whole "bare drive" thing is on newegg. I'm guessing it means I get the drive, but no cables, instructions, drivers, etc.

So, can I get the 2 drives as bare drives, then use the exact same cables that are attached to the old drives? All I see is that 2 cables are plugged into the back of the drives (one with larger connector, the other smaller). I'm not sure what these cables are exactly so that I could buy more on newegg.

I also see two different 600GB velociraptors on newegg that appear identical, but one is 2.5" and the other 3.5", but the 3.5" is $55 cheaper. I'm assuming this is the one my desktop requires, but not sure why the price lower for me.

Any help explaining this stuff would be great. Thanks!

 

[rolli59]

Yes you are right with the bare drive and that you can use your existing cables! The small cable is the Data cable and the bigger one power from PSU.
2.5" drives are for laptops and that explains the higher price, more expensive to produce and in less volume!

 

[xunicronx]

Yes, you can use the SATA date cable (7-pins) and the SATA power cable (15-pins) on your new harddrives. A bare drive is just the harddrive. It doesn't come with screws, cables, instructions, software, warranty card, nothing. It won't even come in a retail box, just a little cardboard harness thingy.

 

[lations]

Thanks a lot guys! So I know my tower is "hot swap" or whatever, but I'm guessing that this drive is not compatible with that? Meaning I have to get screws and such?

Also, my tower has like 8 HDD slots, so do the positions matter at all? Can I just plug these things in and the computer recognizes and then lets me set up raid in motherboard?

Slightly different issue: if I have these 2 600GB drives as main drive (1200GB), is it reasonable to just have a crappy 1.5 TB drive that I occasionally mirror to for backup?

 

[rolli59]

if you are meaning tool less then they will work exactly the same as your old ones! Position only matters for not blocking other components.
That backup plan works!

 

[xunicronx]

Hot swap means you can extract the harddrive(s) without having to power down your system. You could probably leave a slot between each harddrive to allow for better airflow if you wanted. Exactly how crappy is this 1.5TB harddrive? lol. I'm not sure if you want to use a crappy harddrive for backup. Is it old or something or an off brand? Well, if you think it will be reliable for backup, then I guess it's good enough for me.

 

[lations]

Thanks so much guys! Ha, I guess crappy is relative term, it's 7200 rpm with 32mb cash and i think reputable brand. I just know accessing things on it is way slower than on the raid velociraptors, so I would never use it for anything but backup at this point.

I'm sure I will return when I get these things and somehow destroy my computer trying to replace them.