5punk

Ok, I want to get a new HD drive as I finally think I need more storage. I don't want to spend more than £40, including delivery, and £30 would be better. So what are my options? I want a SATA drive, with the best compromise between space and price. I'm guessing I'm looking at the 80-160GB range here. I currently have two 80GB drives, one IDE and one SATA, but I need more I tell you, MORE!

I have a pair of very nice Maxtor DiamondMaxes that I got from ebuyer.
/vague

edit: http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/102294 ? 160Gb, SATAII, £35.

Whats SATA2? Is it compatible with normal SATA jobbies? Its perfick for what I'm looking for though, ta.

Lateralus wrote:Whats SATA2? Is it compatible with normal SATA jobbies? Its perfick for what I'm looking for though, ta.

sata 2 doesn't exist (it's actually sata 150 and sata 300)

and yes, sata is backwards compatible so a faster drive will work on a slower mobo

I tried a SATA 300 drive with my SATA 150 capable motherboard and had problems, but it may have been a broken drive as I got a larger, sata 150 drive as a replacement..

i've not had a problem mix and matching.

however i have had problems with shitty old cables not handling sata 300, but being fine on 150

All SATA drives should theoretically be able to work with any SATA controller, as backwards compatibility has always been a big issue with those folk. I'm running my 3.0Gbps drive on the 1.5Gbps channel because I had no way to get the drivers for the controller when I installed everything, and it works fine.

And SATA II is just a descriptor for a set of features (such as NCQ), it is not a standard on its own.

deject wrote:And SATA II is just a descriptor for a set of features (such as NCQ), it is not a standard on its own.

Isn't. Never has been. Never will be.

Also, a lot of the things that boast SATAII are only sata 300, rather than containing NCQ joy.

All a bit of a marketing nasty designed to increase my postcunt

Horse's mouth

hands up who expected that to be an "i love horses" link

Dr. kitteny berk wrote:
Isn't. Never has been. Never will be.

Also, a lot of the things that boast SATAII are only sata 300, rather than containing NCQ joy.

All a bit of a marketing nasty designed to increase my postcunt

Horse's mouth

right, I have been misled then.

deject wrote:
right, I have been misled then.

thats america for you

wyrd wrote:hands up who expected that to be an "i love horses" link

Cast thread resurrection!

I'm fed up with my lack of storage space, so I'm going to pop by my local PC shop on the way home and pick up a 160GB sata drive if I can. I currently have a 80GB IDE drive and a 80GB sata drive, and XP is installed on the sata one with the other used for my documents and the paging file. Now if I stick another sata one in there, will the IDE one be holding things up at all? I was proposing to use the 80GB sata for XP/programs/games etc as it is now, and the new one for my documents, music and video, with the paging file there too and the IDE one for overspill. Any particular reason why this may be a bad idea? Of course, it'll probably turn out that I don't have enough power connectors or something and can only have 2 anyway.

Strangely, I hadn't read this when i PM'd you

That is a bit odd! Would leaving the IDE drive in be a problem/bottleneck then, or (as I'm guessing is the case) would it not matter in my system?

shouldn't matter, you may as well just keep everything as is.