| questions regarding pc components | |
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SaZ - Student  |
i usually not a computer noob and sort of know whats good and what not, but i kinda never bought any pc components myself so my knowledge about components is really limited. here are pretty specific questions mostly about hdds.
1.whats hdd 3.5" EIDE (Parallel ATA) ? or hdd 3.5" Serial ATA ? 2.paraellel ones have some kind of IDE thing (wth is that lol) and serial ones are either SATA or SATA II (whats the difference between them? ) 3.lets say one hdd has 8mb (thats some kind of memory parameter for the hdd itself) and the other one has 16mb. what kind of difference they have and do they have a big impact on performance? 4.RAMs: whats better - ddr or ddr2? also if i have ddr2 ram in my pc, i probably cant use ddr ram? i might have even more questions soon. _______________ playing jk3 since 30th of january (2005), member since 1st of february. [Unofficial Master to Vision and Z�diac ] If you can make a fool of yourself infront of 300 people you can do anything - Jaiko D'kana |
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Augusta_Mintaka - Student 
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I believe partitioning is splitting your hard drive into sections, this is often done when the OS is installed. I'm pretty sure that since your drive is not going to house the OS, it wouldn't be necessary. People do recommend partitioning though for security and such. _______________ "Deos fortioribus adesse." |
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SaZ - Student 
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yeah dynamic actually looks better than basic... what about layout? old one has partitioned layout and the new one is 'simple'. i bet that wont affect anything at all? _______________ playing jk3 since 30th of january (2005), member since 1st of february. [Unofficial Master to Vision and Z�diac ] If you can make a fool of yourself infront of 300 people you can do anything - Jaiko D'kana This comment was edited by SaZ on Aug 25 2007 11:27pm. |
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Augusta_Mintaka - Student
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Dynamic storage is a tad more flexible than basic, but if you want to change it to basic you can probably do it in disk management.
Here, this can probably help you out. http://www.helpwithwindows.com/windowsxp/howto-20.html _______________ "Deos fortioribus adesse." This comment was edited by Augusta_Mintaka on Aug 25 2007 09:51pm. |
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SaZ - Student
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kinda never dealt with any new hdd so i didnt know i had to partition and format it first lol.
sounds logical... uhhh anyway it seems i kinda screwed the whole process tho. i didnt know how to do it properly so as im a very trusting guy i did the thing my friend told me to. i booted with my windows cd and formated it that way. however after making a partition it started installing windows. i kinda freaked out and rebooted lol 
so as a noob i am i continued my unholy legacy of noobyness by going to drive management in the menu amik spoke about (before he posted about it ofcourse). there i kinda deleted partition O_o but formated it afterwards... and it kinda works lol now compared to my old hdd it has dynamic type instead of basic and simple layout instead of partition one. is that going to be a problem? _______________ playing jk3 since 30th of january (2005), member since 1st of february. [Unofficial Master to Vision and Z�diac ] If you can make a fool of yourself infront of 300 people you can do anything - Jaiko D'kana This comment was edited by SaZ on Aug 25 2007 09:38pm. |
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Augusta_Mintaka - Student
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Heh, I don't know about IDE, but you can either have windows detect the hardware (there is an option somewhere in the toolbox) or go to run>devmgmt.msc and see if it's been detected. If so, see if it's enabled. _______________ "Deos fortioribus adesse." |
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SaZ - Student
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didnt have much money that day and also didnt think id have any problems with all this stuff, because i only need that hdd for storage etc so i bought IDE hdd...
but... when in bios there are two menus: 1. boot devices priority 2. hard drives in hard drives i see my both drives: 1st my old sata hdd 2nd my new ide hdd however in boot device priorities menu i see this: 1. the hdd i set as '1st' in the hard drives menu. 2. flopy drive (weird, i dont even have it) 3. dvd rom i tried setting the imaginary flopy drive into something else but all i can choose is obviously the '1st' hdd, non existant flopy drive, dvdrom and 'disabled'. whats the problem? not enough power? _______________ playing jk3 since 30th of january (2005), member since 1st of february. [Unofficial Master to Vision and Z�diac ] If you can make a fool of yourself infront of 300 people you can do anything - Jaiko D'kana This comment was edited by SaZ on Aug 25 2007 01:08pm. |
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Augusta_Mintaka - Student
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SATA drives shouldn't be that expensive; 500 gigs would set you back 120 dollars. Perhaps there is an online solution for you if the stores are too expensive. _______________ "Deos fortioribus adesse." |
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SaZ - Student
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nah my graphics card is pretty old - x600xt.
damn i realised that most of the shops here either sell extremely expensive sata hdd or offer a variety of sata 2 hdd. the problem is - my motherboard only supports sata hdd 
madness... _______________ playing jk3 since 30th of january (2005), member since 1st of february. [Unofficial Master to Vision and Z�diac ] If you can make a fool of yourself infront of 300 people you can do anything - Jaiko D'kana |
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Augusta_Mintaka - Student
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If you have anything around 450 watts then you should be ok. People usually don't know how much wattage the system needs, they just overestimate.
If, by chance, you have a high end graphics card, then your looking at 550+ watts. _______________ "Deos fortioribus adesse." |
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Masta - Jedi Council 
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The overall output should be displayed on the label somewhere on your psu. _______________ Find out more about the Jedi Academy Aurochs here and more about Masta here! Married to Kain. |
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SaZ - Student 
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hmmm now i just have to know how much W i got left.
dunno how heh _______________ playing jk3 since 30th of january (2005), member since 1st of february. [Unofficial Master to Vision and Z�diac ] If you can make a fool of yourself infront of 300 people you can do anything - Jaiko D'kana |
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Augusta_Mintaka - Student 
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Then you're pretty much set; I was saying that if you didn't have space, then you could buy a drive controller. It's like a card that has slots for you to hook drives to, but I never used a SATA controller so it's an iffy.
Oh and you have an ok power supplies, right? 450+ watts? Not a big issue, but if you already have a few things taking up pci and pci-e slots, it might become a problem. _______________ "Deos fortioribus adesse." This comment was edited by Augusta_Mintaka on Aug 22 2007 12:12am. |
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SaZ - Student
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well i think there are 4 slots for SATA things to be connected.
so i think i can atleast connect the new hdd im going to buy. new hdd is mostly going to be used for storage, maybe for games too. Quote: If you don't, I believe you can use drive controllers for a few more free slots. That's an iffy from me though, I only used SCSI controllers. you do realise that i have no idea what you just said?  _______________ playing jk3 since 30th of january (2005), member since 1st of february. [Unofficial Master to Vision and Z�diac ] If you can make a fool of yourself infront of 300 people you can do anything - Jaiko D'kana This comment was edited by SaZ on Aug 21 2007 11:46pm. |
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Augusta_Mintaka - Student
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What's the hd space going to be used for? Data storage, gaming, media? I'm pretty sure if your motherboard has SATA support, it will have enough room for expansion. To be safe, just check if you have space.
If you just want data storage, external HDs are pretty good and aren't as slow as they used to be. If you don't, I believe you can use drive controllers for a few more free slots. That's an iffy from me though, I only used SCSI controllers. _______________ "Deos fortioribus adesse." This comment was edited by Augusta_Mintaka on Aug 21 2007 05:46pm. |
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Masta - Jedi Council 
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Quote: does devices stand for hdd as well? yes
Quote: currently i have one hdd (which is probably SATA coz of that smaller connector). i want more free space for my stuff so am i restricted or what
You are restricted to one device per SATA cable. ATA /IDE allows for two devices per cable. With other words, IDE cables have 3 plugs of which you can use 2 plugs to connect multiple devices whilst using the remaining one to connect the devices to the mainboard. In contrast, SATA cables have only two plugs - sucks if you own more SATA devices than you have slots on your mainboard. _______________ Find out more about the Jedi Academy Aurochs here and more about Masta here! Married to Kain. |
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SaZ - Student
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Quote: SATA is a different type of connector that allows for faster speed and additional features like hot-pluging etc, but restricts the amount of devices you can plug into your mainboard to 1 per cable (as compared to 2 per cable with IDE's). im not sure i understood this part. does devices stand for hdd as well? O_o currently i have one hdd (which is probably SATA coz of that smaller connector). i want more free space for my stuff so am i restricted or what
_______________ playing jk3 since 30th of january (2005), member since 1st of february. [Unofficial Master to Vision and Z�diac ] If you can make a fool of yourself infront of 300 people you can do anything - Jaiko D'kana |
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Masta - Jedi Council
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Quote: 1.whats hdd 3.5" EIDE (Parallel ATA) ?
or hdd 3.5" Serial ATA ? 2.paraellel ones have some kind of IDE thing (wth is that lol) and serial ones are either SATA or SATA II (whats the difference between them? ) The 3.5" (obviously) stands for the size of the device. IDE is a type of connector between the device and your mainboard, and is semi-synonymous to ATA aka PATA - an IDE cable looks usually similiar to this and is still fairly common. EIDE is just an improved version to the older standard IDE system, and adds DMA support to the hdds - slightly faster than the normal IDE connection, due to the fact that the hdd directly transfers data to the memory and doesn't require the cpu to idle during the process. SATA is a different type of connector that allows for faster speed and additional features like hot-pluging etc, but restricts the amount of devices you can plug into your mainboard to 1 per cable (as compared to 2 per cable with IDE's). SATA comes in different speeds, with SATA 1.5 gbit/s (as compared to the standard PATA133 with only 1.33 gbit/s), and SATA 3.0 gbit/s aka SATA 2. Quote: 3.lets say one hdd has 8mb (thats some kind of memory parameter for the hdd itself) and the other one has 16mb. what kind of difference they have and do they have a big impact on performance?
I think you mean the parallel data transfer rate there. Standard ATA connectors have a 16bit transfer rate, meaning that they can only transfer 16bit at a time between the devices. As long as the hdd is sufficient for your needs, the impact on performance will be minimal at best. PATA is rather sufficient in most cases, but if you want to get something future-proof, you might want to switch to SATA - just make sure your mainboard supports it, and that you have sufficient plugs available. Quote: 4.RAMs: whats better - ddr or ddr2? also if i have ddr2 ram in my pc, i probably cant use ddr ram?
DDR2 are naturally superior to their predecessors, but you need a mainboard that supports either type. The DDR2 DIMMs slightly differ in their structure from the normal DDR ones, and each will require a special kind of slot in order to plug them in, thus there is no backwards compatibility with memory. Find out what brand is supported by your mainboard, and use that one - or get a new mainboard. _______________ Find out more about the Jedi Academy Aurochs here and more about Masta here! Married to Kain. |
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SaZ - Student
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what to do with my old ddr2 512 then? ;p _______________ playing jk3 since 30th of january (2005), member since 1st of february. [Unofficial Master to Vision and Z�diac ] If you can make a fool of yourself infront of 300 people you can do anything - Jaiko D'kana |
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Kenyon - Lord of the Dance 
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Unfortunately, I can't help with the hard drive question. As for the memory: DDR2 is the follow up to DDR, and generally a lot better. DDR3 already exists, but it's expensive and as of now doesn't offer any major improvements above DDR2.
My advice for the memory: get a good brand (Crucial, Corsair, etc) of DDR2 memory at a good clock speed, and if you're going to go for 2 gigs, just buy them in one set (2x 1gb). That always runs faster than mixing old memory with new memory. This comment was edited by Kenyon on Aug 21 2007 10:46am. |
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