Hard drive suggestions.

**carpcnoobie** · 03-09-2004, 07:54 PM

Hello all,

This is my very first post after a lot of reading on this site.

Naturally I have many questions. I'm looking to build my first car pc as a trial & error run.

One of my questions is in regards to what size hard drive should I run?? I'm planning on using a 3.5 inch, but I was wondering what's the best capacity to buy? Should I go with a 30 gig which is relatively inexpensive, but obviously doesn't hold as many songs, or should I shoot for the moon and get as large of a drive as I can afford?

I've been debating this from different angles. Large capacity vs. durability vs. speed vs. life span, etc.

I would greatly appreciate the opinions and input. Thanks.

**kami333** · 03-09-2004, 08:26 PM

At this point, unless you have spare 30GB HDs floating around, go for bigger. 120-160GB seems to be the best price/space right now. One thing to consider is buying a hd that has a longer warranty on it, that way you can get it replaced easily even if you have a head crash.

**gospeed.racer** · 03-10-2004, 01:34 AM

My experience lately has been this....

any hard drive up to about 60gb is about $2.00 a GB
any hard drive over about 60gb is around $1.00 a GB
any hard drive over about 120gb is about $.75-.50 a GB (sometimes with a rebate though)

I would save up for what you can afford, the more you spend now, the less you will later!

**deadweasel** · 03-10-2004, 01:44 AM

Originally Posted by gospeed.racer

My experience lately has been this....

any hard drive up to about 60gb is about $2.00 a GB
any hard drive over about 60gb is around $1.00 a GB
any hard drive over about 120gb is about $.75-.50 a GB (sometimes with a rebate though)

I would save up for what you can afford, the more you spend now, the less you will later!

At our stores around the country, pricing for Western Digital drives has been hovering around 1$/gb for the 60gb, 80gb, 120gb and 200gb models. Some other brands are a little more/less expensive, but not by much, and I trust WD anyhow, especially those JB Special Edition (8mb cache) versions, since they come with a 3 year warranty! W00t!

**gospeed.racer** · 03-10-2004, 01:51 AM

Arent the Westerns all going to 8mb now? My Toshiba laptop drive I just got it a 5400rpm 16mb cache hehe.....I just dont get it! (I mean I dont see why there are not a slew of 16mb desktop drives out now...and as I hear it Sata is a waste so far as well...where is all the technology going!?)

**Walleye** · 03-10-2004, 02:06 AM

more buffer size = greater cacheing, and less speeding up. thus, more power conserved.

i'd say it's currently about 1.25 / gig for up to .85 a gig for up to 80, and .70 a gig for up to 160. past that, get your rebates.

all the main HDD manufacturers have about equal speeds, reliability, etc. However, Seagate makes the quietest drives. And the Hitachi's have come back with a vengeance... so no more complaining about deathstars.

Hard drive manufacturers arent abandoning the 2 mb drives. they're just there for the budget market who budgets on the wrong things.

I'd also reccommend buying a drive from a retail store. if the drive itself doesnt come with the 3 year warranty, buy one. if this is going in your car, then since it is a 3.5" drive, it WILL get damaged. it's best to just accept and plan for that, so you're not up **** creek when it does happen.

**frenchnew** · 03-10-2004, 03:03 AM

Originally Posted by deadweasel

At our stores around the country, pricing for Western Digital drives has been hovering around 1$/gb for the 60gb, 80gb, 120gb and 200gb models. Some other brands are a little more/less expensive, but not by much, and I trust WD anyhow, especially those JB Special Edition (8mb cache) versions, since they come with a 3 year warranty! W00t!

Better watch that 3 year Warranty, Western Digital reduced their warranty coverage last October to 1 year.

Go and check http://support.wdc.com/warranty/policy.asp

for the full disclosure.

regards

frenchnew

**carpcnoobie** · 03-10-2004, 04:54 AM

Thanks for all the replies,

That seems to be my experience at the moment that the larger drives are the better value per gig. The hard drive in my desktop has an 80gig Maxtor and I'm very happy with that. I just wasn't sure which was the better logic, to get a smaller hard drive or a larger one. That answers one of my questions. Don't worry there are many more to come.

Can someone tell me what the major files I'm going to be saving on this hard drive? What I have done for the time being is to use a partition on my desktop that is available to run a 'trial version'. I use this to tinker with XP, tinker with the interfaces, make sure all the programs I want to use will work properly, etc. But I'm still unsure of how much space will be used in the real application.

Example: Right now, with all the applications and XP, I'm barely using over 2 gig of space. (See sig below for future plans). Of course mp3s depends on what I have and will have. Likewise with movies. However, I'm not familiar with the navigation programs at all. How much space do these applications typically require? Are all the maps saved on the hard drive or to CD/DVD? Playing DVDs comes straight from the DVD drive, and are not saved on the hard drive, right?

I've built computers for a desk, but it's a different frame of mind for a car. Sorry for the lengthy questions. Your responses are really appreciated.

**telekineticfool** · 03-10-2004, 03:52 PM

Get maxtor or western digital...get the biggest one you can for $100 or so.

**kami333** · 03-10-2004, 09:46 PM

It all depends on your personal preference. I have a huge mp3 and movie collection (spent last summer ripping all my disks) so it's not feasible for me to have everything on the carpc. I usually just keep some of my favorite albums and some current ones, plus some movies that I like so I can get away with 40GB. GPS programs typically have an option to copy all the map files and things to the HD, depending on what you run it'll probably take up a gig or so. I have everything installed on a 6GB partition (WinXP, ME, MapPoint, some various programs) and it fits just fine.