New Hd

[{I}{K}{E}]

Ok I wanna buy a new HD not sure what size I was thinking 120GB.

Can someone give me an advice?
Is there a big difference between 2MB and 8MB?

{I}{K}{E}

[Livy]

iv heard the 8mb cache drives are alot better, just have a look at parts websites, and look for the kinda size you want, then look for the one that makes the most economic sense for your needs. thats what i did and eneded up with a 80gig maxtor.
thought ive heard good things about the seagate drives, meant to be really quiet.

[lynx]

How new is your bios?
Some older ones have a limit at 137GB, check yours if you are thinking of getting something bigger.

[Livy]

never mind a 137gig limit, mines had a 34gig limit, there was a util on the website to create something that comes on at boot to allow a bigger drive.

[lynx]

The various limits have been (recently)

• 536MB - 20 bit addressing
• 2GB - 22 bit addessing
• 8GB - 24 bit addessing
• 34GB - 26 bit addessing
• 137GB - 28 bit addessing

The new limit is 48 bit addressing. All we need now is for someone to build a 144PB drive. B)

[Livy]

what doesthe bit addresing mean? i take it my old board must be 26bit, as i had to enable a jumber on the drive to get bios to recognise it. its about 4/5 years old

[lynx]

It's the number of bits used to tell the drive which sector thw system wishes to read/write.

1 bit = 2 options (0,1)
2 bits = 4 options (0-3)
3 bits = 8 options (0-7)
etc.

Each sector is 512 bytes in size, so it is easy to see where the limits are, and what the industry did to raise those limits, It seems strange they raised the limits in such small amounts each time. But with the latest change, they've obviously decided to stop messing about.

As far as I can understand, the latest change is quite a step forward, so the fix you have to break the 34GB barrier won't go beyond the 137GB limit, because it requires an extra bus transaction between the controller and the disk.

[{I}{K}{E}]

Ok I want a 80GB HD, must be IDE.

what about:

Western Digital 80.0Gb, 7200rpm, ATA100, 8Mb cache, I can get it for 89 euro's

[zapjb]

Check out the warranty. In the US most now have 1yr p/l. Then they have special editions with 3yr p/l.

[{I}{K}{E}]

Originally posted by zapjb@2 October 2003 - 17:24
Check out the warranty. In the US most now have 1yr p/l. Then they have special editions with 3yr p/l.

3 years!