Slowly Rebuilding My PC

[Oz1956]

I have recently replaced every part in my pc except my hard drive. I've been researching them and really not sure which is best. I'm wanting a 2T internal hard drive and during my research I see some that are bare drives, which I understand is just the hard drive w/o any extras. I have SATA cables that came with my new mobo, so that's no problem. My question is will I need a manual? I've never replaced a hard drive, so I'm wondering how difficult it could be. Also, my mobo uses the 6.0GB sata cables, so I will, also, need a hard drive that meets that spec. I have a 500GB Seagate Barricuda Hard drive, atm, and it has done me well over the last 5 yrs and I plan on keeping it as a secondary hard drive for miscellaneous stuff. I'm having a hard time choosing between Seagate and WD. Any suggestions will be appreciated.

 

[andy_Man]

Go with WD, more reliable than Seagate. (Although I have Seagate right now). You do not need a manual, it's simply plug in sata cable, plug in sata power.

Only thing to think about is which controller you want driving your hard drive. Motherboards sometimes have more than one sata controller, this is identified in your motherboard manual by sata port color. For example, you might have gray and black sata ports. Gray for intel controller, and black for marvell controller. Check your motherboard manual, usually you want to use the intel controller if given the option.

 

[That_Guy88]

Go with the HD that is the best value. Both are good brands. You will not need a manual for replacing the HDD. It is as simple as plugging in the cables. Now, if you want to transfer you boot partition to the new drive, (make the new drive the C: drive), you will need some drive cloning software to do that. But there would probably be no benefit to migrating to a HD to another HD. You can get some pretty good SSD's for under $100 now however, and you might want to look into that.

 

[GObonzo]

You will most likely just be "pluggin and playing" with your new HD. if the operating system is already installed and you are just adding a storage drive it should be auto detected and the most you should have to do is format the drive once it is detected.
If you are replacing the drive your OS is installed on then your existing Windows media will prepare the disc for Windows' installation. in this situation you may need to change the boot disc in your BIOS settings.

the WD Black series is the best 7200rpm drives I've found, but cost slightly more than others. the new WD Blue series seems to be high quality also, is what i have started buying recently. i have had a couple SG Barracudas die on me but still have 2 running that are >2 yrs old.

your best option is to purchase a smaller sized SSD for Windows, ~120GB. then use the new 2TB 7200rpm HD for games, media files, and other storage. the 500Gb you still have could be used for downloads, temp space, extra storage, etc.

 

[Oz1956]

Thanks for all the great input. I've looked at some SSD's, just not sure what they are really for. Do I use it for just my OS installation or what? Not too sure about the WD Black's anymore. They have been getting a bad rap of late. I've always liked WD, even though the first one I had crashed and took out my power supply too, but that was years ago. Any input on the WD Green? This is a gaming system, not much into media. I have not re-installed the OS. Will do once I get the hard drive in.