What hard drive to get

**Mikeyd08** · 07-16-2007, 01:41 PM

I had a sony vaio as a desktop but the hard drive toasted out.

And i need a new hard drive but i decided i was going to run this in my car pc.
What type of hard drive and capacity and RPM & size would be ideal for me

I plan on running

Road runner with GPS
& an mp3/ music player through my system.
I will have around 10 gb of music on my system
& plan on running a wifi connection by using other peoples connection [dont star controversy but its just what i am going to do.

It has to be an IDE HD,

which should i get
-Mike

**TruckinMP3** · 07-16-2007, 01:48 PM

One that fits your size, power consumption, and warranty needs.

I've had good experience with Maxtor, others history varies.

**Mikeyd08** · 07-16-2007, 03:21 PM

. . . well what is a very common one. You know similar to the lilliput or xenarc of touchscreens with good reps & has good loading speed

**Profozone** · 07-16-2007, 03:24 PM

Well, as far as brand goes, that's personal taste, I think, but one with a faster spindle speed like 7200 RPM or more, will have faster access times. It may make it less durable, but I don't know that and so far, I have heard of people using all kinds of desktop drives with no issues.

SATA drives are supposed to be faster.

Laptop drives, which it sounds like your considering, are supposed to be more ruggedized.

Finally, price is usually what dictates size for me. I just buy as many Gigs as I am willing to afford. Fortunately, they are pretty cheap these days.

As far as mounting goes, I found some rubber washers at the hardware store and I plan on mounting my drive using those to help with the shock absorption. Then of course, there is the whole vertical or horizontal feud going on. I won't render my opinion on that. But I hope this helps.

Good luck.

**DarquePervert** · 07-16-2007, 03:40 PM

Every geek si going to have a different opinion about a different brand of hard drive. It seems that most everyone has had a NEGATIVE experiece with one brand or another.
As far as i'm concerned, I've never had any significant issues with any brand of HDD, save for ones that had known manufacturing issues or defects like the IBM DeskStar (DeathStar) drives.

**TruckinMP3** · 07-16-2007, 03:50 PM

Originally Posted by Mikeyd08

. . . well what is a very common one. You know similar to the lilliput or xenarc of touchscreens with good reps & has good loading speed

True, but this is the portion you should focus on:

Originally Posted by TruckinMP3

One that fits your size, power consumption, and warranty needs.

Here are some additional things to consider:
How much info do you need to store? (desktops store more data)

Do you have a power limitation (close to max on the power supply, generally laptops require less power)

Do you have a physical size requirement for the drive to fit in the space you are installing it in? (laptop vs desktop)

What is your budget like? (desktop drives are less money for the same storage)

Based on your answers to those questions you should be able to figure out if you "want" a desktop vs a laptop drive, how much space you should look for, and what is your tolerance for spending dollars.

At the completion of the project you need to be satisfied.... not the rest of us.

**thepunkerguy** · 07-17-2007, 01:49 AM

Well, here is the low down on hard drives form my experience. I have been the head tech at a computer shop for the last 5 years and have fixed / built thousands of computers. Here is what my experience boils down to. If you are going for a desktop hard drive, ONLY buy a Western Digital. Most other brands suck, and Maxtor is the absolute WORST. I throw them out and replace several of them a week, Maxtor drives go out like candy. If you are going for a laptop hard drive ONLY buy a Toshiba drive. They are the most reliable laptop drives you can buy. Even the western digital laptop drives aren't that great, and IBM/Hitatchi laptop drives are the worst. Seagates aren't very good either. All I will sell to customers is WD (desktop) and Toshiba (laptop) drives and over the last 5 years i think that maybe only 1 or 2 of the drives i have installed has came back with a problem, not bad considering how many hundreds or thousands i've installed. I have no reason to prefer one brand over another for any reason other than reliability. For desktop drives, just get a 7200rpm drive of your capacity choice, and pay the couple dollars extra to get the WD drives with the 8mb or 16mb cache. And if you really want to go to reliability get a WD RE Drive, they are like $10 more, but they are made for servers and use better bearings which usually last much longer. For laptop drives, make sure you get a 5400rpm drive of your capacity choice. Good luck to ya man, and enjoy it! If ya got any other PC questions ask away.
- Mike

**Mikeyd08** · 07-18-2007, 04:24 PM

ehh sorry for not really gettin back to you guys

I plan on running a slimmed version of XP
Road RUnner
a navigation system [GPS]
winamp or a music program
& use a program that i can save music videos to.
-
I may keep an episode of family guy or the office on there for ****s and giggles but thats about it.
-
as for budget, i could afford any hard drive, its just that i dont want to have to get a new motherboard , and new ram , to run SATA HD's & DDR2 RAM. Money is not the problem so under $150 is good for me
-
Ive got my ram at 512 which is very ideal @ 133mhz
-
Im leaning toward a western didgital 7200rpm 120gb HD from newegg.com for $50 shipped

**thepunkerguy** · 07-18-2007, 04:36 PM

Originally Posted by Mikeyd08

ehh sorry for not really gettin back to you guys

I plan on running a slimmed version of XP
Road RUnner
a navigation system [GPS]
winamp or a music program
& use a program that i can save music videos to.
-
I may keep an episode of family guy or the office on there for ****s and giggles but thats about it.
-
as for budget, i could afford any hard drive, its just that i dont want to have to get a new motherboard , and new ram , to run SATA HD's & DDR2 RAM. Money is not the problem so under $150 is good for me
-
Ive got my ram at 512 which is very ideal @ 133mhz
-
Im leaning toward a western didgital 7200rpm 120gb HD from newegg.com for $50 shipped

I would recommend getting a Toshiba Laptop IDE drive (2.5") and then buying one of these adapters http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16812203012
to make it work on your motherboard with regular IDE Controllers. The laptop drive will be more reliable in your vehicle, run cooler, and take up less space.
- Mike

**bembowe** · 07-18-2007, 05:16 PM

well here is my experience on my car pc hard drives. i started off with a Fujitsu 60 gig notebook 5400 ata drive. lasted me a year until it rained so heavily that water went into my system to toast the drive. I bought another Fujitsu 120gig notebook drive drive. after a month. i hit a bump and toasted that one. this time I am buying a Toshiba notebook drive. am not sure if the brand might have been the reason for their fragility or user error but one thing is that i wont buy Fujitsu again.

hopefully i get better luck with toshiba