Internal Hard Disk Recommendations

[gawdi]

My poor little dell is puffing and panting - its hard disk is now over 50% full, so time to fit an additional one to increase capacity....

Ideally looking for 300gb plus disk, simple to install, nothing fancy - just IDE or whatever.... all the ones I looked at seem to be RAID - which I dont require...

Any recommendations?

[Jase]

A hard drive isnt a RAID drive by default - RAID is a technology used on hard drives for mainly redundancy but also performance. Any hard drive can be used for RAID as long as you have a RAID controller or software.

Depending on the age of the computer look at serial ATA drives (SATA) - IDE drives are hard to get now but they are still around. If the computer doesnt have an ATA controller on the motherbaord you can buy a PCI ATA controller for not very much which will allow you to connect an ATA drive - you will also probably need to get a power converter to convert the connector from a standard AT/ATX power / IDE connection to one for ATA.

Vendor wise everyone has good and bad experiences of most companies but in my experience there is little difference in them all.

Also if its just to use for additional storage you might want to consider an external drive - they are cheap and literally just plug and play. Again make sure your computer has a USB2 controller to get the best from it - if it only has USB 1.1 it will work but it will be slow especially when moving lots of data. As above, you can get a PCI USB2 card cheaply to add USB2 ports if required.

[gawdi]

Its a dell dimension - i just looked up on the dell support site - it requires a serial ATA........
I already use 2 x external.... so thats why I'm looking for internal....

[Damian]

Seagate or Western Digital are the only two I use.

[Willie_Ekkerslike]

for internal Western Digital or Maxtor are what i use, would not touch Maxtor externals anymore though.

[badbee]

I use Seagate, the only two failures I have had have been with WD, though they have a good name, so I've probably been unlucky.

[dvtimes]

You cvan buy an ice box thing. Its around £10. You put the harddrive in it then simply plug into a usb slot. Thus an externall harddrive.

[redwhiteandblue]

I use Seagate, the only two failures I have had have been with WD, though they have a good name, so I've probably been unlucky.

Snap. Had a WD Caviar fail on me last year, replaced with two big f*ck off Seagates.