PC problem - DPChallenge Forums

05/19/2006 11:59:50 AM · #1

My hard disk is giving me problem.

I need to replace my hard disk. right now i have Two hard disk. I have a mini tower. My board can support more than three hard disk.My minitower doesnt allow me to use 3 hard disk together. when installed my second hard disk i had to remove my CD rom.

So i have two option one is to buy a new mini tower. Second is to buy a external casing and attach my third hard disk to my Pc using a USB cable.

I am thinking going for the second option as i dont want to spend money on a bigger tower.

I just want to know will the speed be same for accessing my hard disk i.e if it is attached via usb cable as compared to being attached via mother board.

notonline

Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM

05/19/2006 12:04:45 PM · #2

no it will be slower if your running USB 1.1 but 2.0 shouldn't be that bad. I would however get a firewire instead of USB.

SamDoe1

05/19/2006 12:05:57 PM · #3

The USB cable is actually faster than the IDE transfer rate of the internal hard drives, unless you have a serial ATA set up. So you won't see any decrease in speed if you are running IDE hard drives and a USB 2.0 set up as the bottleneck in the system will be the IDE drives anyway.

05/19/2006 12:13:07 PM · #4

I think it is 1.1

SamDoe1

05/19/2006 01:52:32 PM · #5

Originally posted by General:

I think it is 1.1

Then you will see a significant drop in speed.

As a comparison of max transfer speeds:

USB 1.1: 12 MB per second
IDE: 100 or 133 MB per second depending on your system bus
USB 2.0: 480 MB per second
Serial ATA (SATA): 300 MB per second

Message edited by author 2006-05-19 13:52:46.

05/19/2006 02:05:07 PM · #6

Mine is P-3, year 2000 model, last time i bough a 40gb hard disk it cost me say like 40-50$, my point is that my hard disk will be IDE right, ATA is expensive one right

SamDoe1

05/19/2006 03:52:36 PM · #7

Originally posted by General:

Mine is P-3, year 2000 model, last time i bough a 40gb hard disk it cost me say like 40-50$, my point is that my hard disk will be IDE right, ATA is expensive one right

Yes and no. The cost of SATA has come way down since 2000, as expected. But back then, SATA drives were quite expensive. I'm assuming you have an IDE100 system. If you don't want a new case, you can buy a USB 2.0 PCI card that will go into the PCI slot on your motherboard. You can then plug USB 2.0 devices into the new ports on that card. They will run at USB 2.0 speeds and will interface directly to your motherboard. Your other option might be to just get a new case, you can find them for cheap on ebay or on newegg.com, and just transfer everything in you current case to that one. Another option is to get rid of one of your drives and add a much larger one in it's place. To transfer the data off of it, you can leave the case open and just plug them both in (one of them being not mounted to the case) and transfer the files onto the larger drive. When that's done, you can just remove the smaller drive and mount the larger one in the case.

Bobster

Canon EOS-20D

Canon RF 24-70mm f/2.8 L IS

05/19/2006 07:47:42 PM · #8

Originally posted by SamDoe1:

As a comparison of max transfer speeds:

USB 1.1: 12 MB per second
IDE: 100 or 133 MB per second depending on your system bus
USB 2.0: 480 MB per second
Serial ATA (SATA): 300 MB per second

actually you'll get nowhere near 100/133MB/Sec unless u RAID 0 with IDE

USB 2.0 is 480Mb/Sec(Megabits) not MB/Sec.. and thats burst not sustained..

Firewire 400 is 400Mb/Sec sustained
Firewire 800 is 800Mb/Sec sustained

Serial ATA is more like 150MB/Sec again in RAID 0
Serial ATA 2 is nearer 300MB/sec " " " " but you'll prolly be around the 200MB/Sec mark..

Message edited by author 2006-05-19 19:48:11.

totaldis

Canon EOS-400D Rebel XTi

Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II

05/19/2006 08:03:13 PM · #9

if your board doesn't have usb2.0, its probably time for an upgrade all together.

fotomann_forever

05/19/2006 08:06:38 PM · #10

Originally posted by totaldis:

if your board doesn't have usb2.0, its probably time for an upgrade all together.

Yeah, I'd have to agree.

kirbic

Canon EOS R5

05/19/2006 08:32:01 PM · #11

You don't specify whether it's your boot drive that needs replacing. If it is not, then follow this procedure:
- Purchase a larger drive to replace the second drive in the system.
- Install the drive temporarily by hooking up power and data cables, and just temporarily mount the drive by tie-wrapping it to the chassis, or setting it in a place where it won't dangle about. Make sure that the exposed circuit board on the bottom of the drive cannot short to anything.
- Move the data from the old second drive to the new drive and verify it.
- Uninstall the old second drive, and mount the new one in its place.
The old drive could be mounted in an inexpensive external case if you'd find the smaller drive usefluy at all. I usually find that when I replace with a larger drive, I have no use for the smaller one. I hysically destroy them to avoid data being recovered, and dispose of them.