OT: Computer upgrade advice

[Will]

narf poit chez BOOM said:
They want $200 for 500GB hard drives here. Online it is!

How do I tell what kind of connector my motherboard has?

Well, if you're not sure what you're looking for, it can be a little difficult to see the connector types. The easiest is if you have IDE connectors open. With these you will see a plastic box with two rows of pins sticking up. If you have a floppy drive, it's plugged into a similar socket (except it has fewer pins... I believe it's 2x20 for IDE, and 2x16 for floppy drives; IDE will have a pin "missing" somewhere near the middle, floppy will have two missing toward the end). SATA connectors are a little harder to spot. Usually there will be a piece of plastic about the width of your thumb sticking up with little gold contacts rising vertically on one side. There is probably a little plastic hook next to the part with the gold contacts to seat the plug properly. In either case, you will probably see "IDE" or "SATA" written on the mainboard somewhere close to it. Also, I don't know of a way to tell SATA and SATA II connectors apart without going into manuals or BIOS or something, but if you have an SATA II drive it will work on a regular SATA connector, so might as well go for the SATA II one.

Also, be aware that if you are doing a RAID-1 setup, a lot of RAID drivers will barf if you do not give them "identical" drives. So if you have a Maxtor 500GB and a Seagate 500GB, some RAID drivers will refuse to work. If your board says anything about "JBOD" though, you can set up that instead, since it lifts the identical requirement.

--edit: Also, "Ultra ATA" == "IDE". A little confusing, I have no idea why they chose two entirely different names for the same thing.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

I've got IDE, methinks. I'll open up the computer and make sure before buying - Are there any real differences between the two drives I linked to?

Thanks again.

[Fyron]

Seagate Barracudas tend to be a little quieter, but its usually a toss-up. I'd probably go with them to save $30.

[MrToxin]

I recommend Maxtor drives. Unless you specifically bought otherwise, your computer is 99% likely to be IDE.

As for backups, a more cost-effective way is to snag a small harddrive and just copy important files to it periodically. You could also snag some cheap web hosting and never put a website on it and use it to store copies of important files that you allow only FTP access to, but that might be a bit overkill unless you plan on having a website too (this is how I backup my files, as I have a website and more bandwidth and storage than I can currently use)

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Well, drives are ordered. Hopefully, I will soon recieve them and be able to put my spaceship...I mean, put them in my computer.