Problems with large drives

[eraos]

I need to buy a new hard drive since my biggest drive just died last night. Luckily it wasn't my main drive.

In my Windows XP SP2 computer, I have 3 drives: a 20, a 40, and an 80 (which just died). I'm looking to buy one drive on which to have all my date. I would like a 250. The drive will be on an IDE ATA100/133 cable.

Is there anything I should look out for when getting a drive this big? Will there be a potential overheating problems?
Is anything intrinsically wrong with a large drive?

I can settle with a smaller drive if need be, since I can RMA the drive that just died and have two drives.

 

[Mindset]

There's nothing 'wrong' with large drives in terms of over heating, etc or compatibilities (since you got SP1/2 for windows to see larger drives than the 127gb cap originally).... The only thing I have problems with is, that it takes a system faster to access 160gb drives than it does to search in a 500GB drive..... Even if they say the seek time is basically the same. When a 160 gb drive gets fragmented, it's not as bad as the same data fragmented in a 500gb drive... That's why I never ran windows or any OS on a very large drive.

 

[Ford Van]

Buy Seagates. Most of their drives have a 5 year warranty, and the honor it!

 

[Mindset]

Yeah, seagates are the best in the market in terms of reliability & warranty. I think actually all their hard drives carry the 5 year warranty.

 

[eraos]

Thanks for the responses.

Does Seagate's warranty hold true on OEM, too?

 

[Mindset]

yes they still warranty OEM Hard Drives too. The retailer might not warranty them as long, but Seagate still warranties OEM drives for 5 years.

 

[zekthedeadcow]

yeah, go seagate... the problem with large drives is that when the head or debris hits the platter more damage is done than on less dense drives... so newer bigger harddrives are actually less reliable than the 20gig drives of yesteryear... howerver reliability gig-per-gig is improved...

 

[Mindset]

yeah, go seagate... the problem with large drives is that when the head or debris hits the platter more damage is done than on less dense drives... so newer bigger harddrives are actually less reliable than the 20gig drives of yesteryear... howerver reliability gig-per-gig is improved...

That's true, however, on the newer seagates, they run perpendicular, so it helps reduce risks like that on data. It also allows a little bit quicker seek times, and more space per platter in later larger models.

 

[eraos]

yeah, go seagate... the problem with large drives is that when the head or debris hits the platter more damage is done than on less dense drives... so newer bigger harddrives are actually less reliable than the 20gig drives of yesteryear... howerver reliability gig-per-gig is improved...

Is there a way to avoid debris in the first place?

 

[Bulls Hit]

Try to avoid dropping your drive off the top of a 50-storey building, hitting it with a sledge hammer, placing it on on train tracks or incenerating it in a furnace.

That should help minimise any debris buildup

 

[Mindset]

not totally, but it's not like it happens every day. Just keep the insides of the case clean, and you'll prolong the life of the drive. They try and make the drives as durable as they can, but a speck of dust can sometimes find it's way onto a drive, and cause read errors.

 

[dgatwood]

Is there anything I should look out for when getting a drive this big? Will there be a potential overheating problems?
Is anything intrinsically wrong with a large drive?

Make sure your interface card supports LBA48 (support for > 128GiB drives). Technically, it's more a driver issue, but unless you have source code for the drivers, the distinction is moot.

If it's an ATA133 card (or on-board ATA133 interface), it should be guaranteed to work. With anything older than that, you may end up having to buy an ATA card. If you can only see the first 128 binary gigs (137 decimal gigs), that's probably why.

Also, your BIOS has to support LBA48 or Windows won't let you use the extended capacity. That's to prevent you from installing Windows on a drive that the BIOS can't fully address. I don't know of any workaround if you run into that brick wall.

 

[Mindset]

If your using that old of a computer than it will most likely be 37GB cap on it, unless your running systems that are few hundred meg's, and then I think the limit was 2gb back than lol. I think they fixed that with the LBA back then because of the 48bit issue. Then they started coming out with BIOS updates for all the major companies when they realized the problem. From what system he's labeling though, I think he should be ok if he's already running a 80GB, that shows that his system is realtivily kind of "newer" & able to handle larger drives either way. With SP2 installed, he should be able to see no limits on drive installations. the 137GB cap was fixed with SP1/2 for support of higher drives. On many systems, I had to upgrade the older windows XP, and run partition magic on it to format the rest, or merge partitions.