Getting a new hard drive - When space runs out...

Oh, sorry. Right click on any PDF file. Then Open With > Choose Program. Then you'll have the checkbox there.

Yeh I considered that too, but unfortunately that is not the end of the story. These ***** dealers here charge 45 euro for building in the **** device!
You sent me once a manual with pictures of how to build the thing in myself, but I cant figure it out.

That's creepy. Five minutes worth work. Pays off I suppose.

Would a video help you out?

Let someone else find you a HHD.. Thats probably a SCSI HD. Maybe Madhava can find you a link to a HD that will work in your machine & is cheap.

Installing is easy... I was scared my first time too Now I'm an old pro.

A quick look at a Dutch price comparison site tells otherwise.

A search for 80GB drives drives costing less than 60e turns up for example the following:

Seagate 80GB 7200rpm: € 56,17 + delivery 7,50
Western Digital 80 GB 7200rpm: € 55,98 + delivery 7,50

And so on. The difference between 40GB and 80GB models is so marginal (about 10e) that it really makes sense to grab the bigger one.

I'll look into the video next time I turn my PC off. (I'm in the middle of a video compression and upload marathon here... stay tuned!)

Weird. I saw that Kelkoo link too, but saw only very high prices. Even now I cant find the cheap ones on that first link you gave me. Give a more detailed link to those prices please, because the low prices on the second link have a subtext 'Alleen voor zakelijke gebruikers' which means 'For businesses only', that is why they are so cheap - they will be sold wholesale.

This link gives you all hard drives sorted by price, beginning with the cheapest.

Go for Seagate (long warranty), Samsung (silent) or Hitachi (marginally faster). Avoid Maxtor and IBM, both have a bit of a bad reputation. Western Digital should be fine, too.

Interface needs to be IDE, more specifically ATA (alias PATA), not SATA. Also, not USB or SCSI. Also, not "notebook" (alias 2.5"), but 3.5" (which is what most are). 5400rpm or 7200rpm - probably won't make much of a difference for your use, if you process videos etc. go for the latter. Anyway the former are getting more rare these days and the price differences are very marginal.

Tutorials on this are pretty easy to find, e.g. About.com.

80GB drive for € 47,20: http://www.icentraldirect.nl/ProductDetail...ctID=NS00157619

There is also eBay

Embarrassing to be given links to Dutch sites by a Finn and a Yank. Unfortunately the prices on Madhava's link are excluding freight prices and the prices on Braja's link are excluding BTW (value added tax of 19%). Thanks a lot anyway. I will try to find out what the gross prices will be of the hardware.

In Finland, I can easily get a 40GB or a 80GB drive for 50-60e + 5-10e for shipping. The profit margins these days are pretty slim (around a 5% markup for most products for the cheaper stores), the wholesale prices from the manufacturers are pretty much the same regardless of the country. Therefore you don't see dramatic variation in the prices for stuff like this, even if you wander through Nehru Place in Delhi. I'm sure you'll find one for a fair price. The ones I looked at had shipping somewhere in the range of 7,50e, which isn't too bad.

Sir, I cannot deny my current abode, but my blood is of another kind:

I compiled this word file of the manual I found on the link that Braj gave. Is this about the story how it goes? If so, I can ask questions about it. Thanks also for the link to the cheap drive, Braj. It seems to be meeting the requirements Madhava specified.

Yes, the drive at the link is just good for you. However the manual isn't, it's for a SATA drive.

A graduating student from New Zealand recently gave our professor a kiwi figure as gurudakSiNa. I still chuckle at the dry comment of another student when he saw it, "What do they taste like?"

Hut! I wonder if said student of violent jests would be well fed on a diet of human flesh alternatives

Huh? Every header on the manual speaks of ATA and that is what you recommended earlier....

If this is the right link, tell me and I will cut and paste a word manual of that - these pages take ages to load!

There is SATA (Serial ATA), which is the newer kind, and PATA (Parallel ATA), which is the older kind. Their cables are different.

Yes, that link you're looking at is correct. The pics are a bit mushy, but I suppose they'll do.

I found Vobis willing to build it in for me for 10 euros only, ready on the spot. I thought of taking the 80 gb one, on the bottom of the list, but if it is SATA or not I dont know. Should this one be allright? The price is groovy for sure.

If I let them just shove in the disk and format it myself it will save me cash. Formatting just a piece of cake right? Just right click on the drive's icon, select Format and that's it?

Yes, that's all there is to formatting. You may need to reboot your PC, it may say, "The newly installed hardware will become active after rebooting" or something like that. UDMA100 or DMA133 means it's a PATA disc. SATA is 150.

10 euros is already fair. Though if I were to do it, it'd take me about file minutes tops to slam it in. But they aren't doing this 24/7, so they have to be paid something for bothering, too.

Yes, I think the 80GB drive is a smarter choice given the price difference. Would you buy a kilo of apples for 90 cents, or two for an euro? Then again, would you take that, or four kilos for an euro and 25 cents? (I have four of those stuffed into my case...)

Would it be OK still? The SATAs are much more costly..........

Yes yes, only and exactly (P)ATA will do, SATA won't without a special adapter card..

SATA requires a certain kind of motherboard--unlikely your board supports it if it is 4+ years old so you want to get a drive that is not SATA. That 80GB drive looked fine. Only a few of the drives listed there were SATA. It's not so common yet.

Pity you're not in the US as you get (after rebate) a 160GB drive for $29 at Compusa.

No way! Is that common for a price?

Send me a suitcase of those! Work with video seems to have no limits in space consumption... Then again, we're getting BluRay and the such sometime soon, so the situation should get a bit easier.

It's an exceptional price, for sure, but the stores here often have a few crazily priced items in order to attract customers, especially around holidays. The deal. And with most of the buzz nowadays being with SATA, we'll probably see a lot more dumping of the older format drives.

Now at present I have a 10 gb drive and an older, 540 mb drive. Madhava, can you remember which one is situated where? I want the new 80 gb drive to replace the old 540 mb drive, and leave the 10 gb drive in its place, running windows and all other programs as always. Will these Vobis guys be able to find it themselves? Or can you remember which one is the old one? Wasnt it the one below?

It's the one that isn't in the default location, if memory serves we had to tweak a bit to get it sit in the case. I'm sure the guys will figure it out, such old drives have an unmistakable style, plus the sizes are always printed on top of the drives.

By the way I split these hard-drive posts to a new thread, this thread hasn't had to do with Acrobat for a good while now.

Also what would be of good use in the future, dear Advaita das:
a DVD-Burner.

Easily you can burn a full DVD with 4456 MB of stuff, store it and again 4456 MB of space won.

But I guess your machine will not be powerful enough, right...maybe it could burn a DVD up to 4x ( right now they burn up to 16x), meaning 15 minutes of burning.

I could easily donate you a DVD-burner.
You would have to take out your already existing CD-ROM (DVD-ROM?) and replace it with the new burner (plug out the broad IDE-cable from your CD/DVD-ROM, plug it in the new burner, bus).

Burning can easily be done with a Nero 6.xxx version.

I just came back from Vobis, the guy refused to build in a new HDD because the 2 existing drives are wrapped together with sticky tape. He said adding the new drive in the same way, replacing the oldest one, would heat up both drives too much. I asked him why this hasnt happened in the last 3 years then with this construction. He said because the oldest drive is so slow that it wont heat up, or I have just been lucky so far. Anyway he showed me there are no slide cases or slots in the PC case to shove the hard drive in so the only alternative is to take both tape-attached hard drives out and place one new one in. Which means I have to re-install windows plus 25 other applications!
He said, however, that one can open the CD drive even without Windows running to stick the Windows XP CD in there. Is that true? (Meanwhile I will have a good long think if I really want to go through such a hassle to gain 70 GB diskspace, or I should just leave it and continue to burn CDs of all the stuff I download and carry on somehow with a 10GB drive with only text and programmes on it).....
Furthermore, if I decide to start from scratch with a new HDD, would I have to reinstall programmes like
1. My ADSL Modem drivers
2. MSN and Yahoo messengers
3. My printer/scanner drivers
4. Nedstat (my website's hitcounter)
?

Right, I remember I had to improvise to get the other hard drive in there... The new 7200rpm drives do indeed heat up more. Without remembering how well the air flows in your PC, it's hard to say if there'd be the possibility of overheating.

Of course, one can improvise more and put the drive hanging secured mid-air or build another slot... (Been there, done that.)



Yes, that's true. You can install from a CD on a fresh blank hard drive, too.

However what I'd do is just copy an image of the old drive to the new drive. Programs such as Acronis DriveImage do an excellent job on this. Attach both drives, boot into Windows, select "transfer disk" (or something like that) and have it do a 1-to-1 copy of your old drive, and you're done in about ten minutes.



1-3 yes, 4 no.

That sounds interesting but requires explanation.
1. Attach both drives - well the mechanic refuses to do that, he also refuses to give a warranty on this.
2. Boot into Windows - that means that the old harddrive containing the windows setup is still there?
3. What is this Acronis Drive Image program, how big is it and where is it found?



I dont understand why MSN and Yahoo messengers would have to be reinstalled. Arent they installed as a function of one's e-mail accounts, that run online and work when one logs in on them with password and so?

1. Yes, you'd have to do that yourself then.
2. Yes, and
3. Read here.




Well, you have to install the programs on your computer. You don't need to re-register an account, and I believe all your contacts are also stored on their servers. But Yahoo messenger doesn't come ready installed with Windows, while MSN does.

Radhe!

Dear Advaita das,

I would do a completely new, clean XP installation.
Sure, it will take time, but you have a new fresh harddisk.

I would in no way attach the 7200 harddisk together with the old one.
Too dangerous and no freakin´warranty.

Just take your time to do a fresh round of installing the system and of the applications.
Before you do that, copy ALL drivers you need, all apps on one or two CDs, so that you do not have to change the CDs so often.
Just take the scanner/printer/modem-cds, copy the drivers on the harddisk and burn all of them on CD.

Believe, you will be more happy afterwards.

Like I said, my offer to donate you a DVD-Burner still stands (Benq 1620pro).

So hammer in the new 7200 harddisk, install all things anew, tell Tarunji to send the burner and be much more happy.

Radheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee Syam.

Of course one easy way around is to get an external USB hard drive case and stick the HD in there. (You may remember, I had one for my laptop in Vraja.) You can get them for less than 20 euros, and it's plug and play, means you can grab your stuff and connect to any PC anywhere. The only question is whether you have USB 2.0 on your PC, otherwise it's going to be a bit sluggish.

Thanks both of you for the tips and the offer. Tarun, the DVD drive needs a slot in my PC-case or is an external device? If so, how do I use it? Madhava, is what you talk about the same as a pen-drive? I had one but it broke down. If not, then what is it and how does it work?

Meanwhile, I have another problem. I formatted the old harddisk, expecting it to be redundant. Now it seems that Cool Edit Pro is using a temp folder on that old HDD but that is no longer there now. Why do I need to allocate a second temp folder to CEP, and where do I put it now?

You would basically replace your current CD-RW with the DVD-RW.

A USB hard drive case means a device like this. Basically, you just stick in a regular hard drive into the case and plug it into your USB port. However as I said, you should first check if you have USB 2.0 on your PC, since the change in speed is dramatic from USB 1.1 (60 MB/s vs. 1.5 MB/s), the second being a bit painful an option for handling bigger amounts of data.



You can just direct it to the same folder as the first temp folder.

Yeah, that would be it.

Open the case, unscrew the old drive (normally 2-4 screws), unplug the broad IDE-cable and the power -cable (power-cable has these 4 colours and 4 big pins), put in the DVD-RW drive, tight the screws, plug in the IDE-cable and the power-cable and ROCK´N ROLL!


I severely doubt that there is an USB 2.0 on the motherboard...