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| Thread ID: 73893 | 2006-11-05 00:15:00 | Is there a way to tell if the hard drive will fit? | Fishy (10540) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 496443 | 2006-11-05 00:15:00 | I have a 40gb hard drive and only have 1gb left on it... I want to buy a 20gb or 40gb hard drive off trademe or somewhere but how can i tell if theres a space or whatever for it to fit in? Like this IDE and SATA crap. I dont know what i have or whether i have both or what. Please help me im really confused. Thanks. |
Fishy (10540) | ||
| 496444 | 2006-11-05 00:29:00 | Are we talking laptop or desktop here? Physically, desktop hdd's are about the same size...actually they ARE the same size! They'd have to be to fit into the bays in the tower. As far as a laptop is concerned, and since space is a real issue...I imagine they are all the same size too....model to model anyway. As a f'r instance: I have replaced all 8 of my 200 gig hdds with 300 gig ones, and they fit ok.....I am running out of room too with all the videos I have stored on them. Next thing is I need to bank hdds in a tower as a stand-alone external storage device. |
SurferJoe46 (51) | ||
| 496445 | 2006-11-05 00:50:00 | I have a 40gb hard drive and only have 1gb left on it... I want to buy a 20gb or 40gb hard drive off trademe or somewhere but how can i tell if theres a space or whatever for it to fit in? Like this IDE and SATA crap. I dont know what i have or whether i have both or what. Please help me im really confused. Thanks. a/ You could take it to your local pc shop and they will do a professional job b/ Let a friends son "fix" it (or is that your mothers sisters son) Is it a "brand" pc. Rule of thumb, if its a desktop and the case is big, it should take another drive, if the case is compact (compaq????), then it probably won't. Also if its less than 2 years old, its probably SATA, IDE otherwise; but you need to open the case to see. |
dolby digital (5073) | ||
| 496446 | 2006-11-05 00:55:00 | I have a 40gb hard drive and only have 1gb left on it . . . I want to buy a 20gb or 40gb hard drive off trademe or somewhere but how can i tell if theres a space or whatever for it to fit in? Like this IDE and SATA crap . I dont know what i have or whether i have both or what . Please help me im really confused . Thanks . If its a desktop, just pull the side off the case and see if there enough physical space for you to install the drive . The drives fit in 3 . 5' bays normally located below the floppy drive, if you havent got much space you could even remove the floppy and install it there . If its a laptop then chances are you can only have one harddrive, some highend models have room for 2 or more but they normally ship with drives bigger than 40gb originally . If you dont have enough space an external firewire or USB enclosure could be an option . They can take either 2 . 5' or 3 . 5' drives of just about any capacity . Buying a 20gb drive really isnt a good idea as the cost per gigabyte is very high when compared to drives of larger capacities . Granted you could buy a secondhand drive from trademe but they still go for very inflated prices . If you can find the cash 320gb drive can be had for as little as $170 . SATA and IDE are the interfaces . IDE is the older interface, it uses the wider ribbon cables and is the slower of the two . SATA is newer, uses smaller cables and is faster . The speed of the interface isnt that big of a problem as modern drives arent fast enough to fully utilize the bus . The interface acutally makes very little difference in terms of speeds, its actually technologies like NCQ and bigger caches on SATA drives that are the cause of the increased performance . If your system supports SATA its the better option as its more future proof and the drives are slightly cheaper . PATA is slowly being phased out, but drives are still avaliable second-hand and new . |
Pete O'Neil (6584) | ||
| 496447 | 2006-11-05 02:56:00 | The physical dimensions of HDD's are almost all the same.A 200GB drive will fit where you have a 2GB now. | kjaada (253) | ||
| 496448 | 2006-11-06 03:17:00 | Yup it's a desktop. And i dont want to spend $170 on space i wont use. especially spending that much cash on this piece of sh!t computer. It was made in 2000 - 2001 so that means its IDE? How can i be certain? Ill pull of the side and see if theres room for it soon. Thanks for help. |
Fishy (10540) | ||
| 496449 | 2006-11-06 03:58:00 | It was made in 2000 - 2001 so that means its IDE? How can i be certain? Ill pull of the side and see if theres room for it soon. Maybe when you pull that side panel off you could have a look? IDE ribbon cables are noticable different to SATA cables. |
Pete O'Neil (6584) | ||
| 496450 | 2006-11-06 04:25:00 | SATA jacks are (usually) red jacks on the motherboard (the big board with circuitry on it), about 1-2 cm long. :) | pcuser42 (130) | ||
| 496451 | 2006-11-06 09:18:00 | If the PC was made in 2000 or 2001 it's definitely IDE - there's no way SATA was around back then (at least not on your average consumer PC). | Erayd (23) | ||
| 496452 | 2006-11-06 09:26:00 | Most desktop computer HDD's are 3.5', some are in different sizes, e.g. bigfoot (it is very unlikely to get one unless you buy secondhand HDD). | developer (4447) | ||
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