Advantage or disadvantage to 3.5" hard drive?

[henthorn]

I have found some pretty good prices on 3.5" hard drives at Newegg. I am in need of a larger hard drive and wondered if there are any disadvantages to the smaller drives. Also, do they usually come with the mounting hardware to allow them mount in the regular sized spaces

 

[crjdriver]

3.5" is the standard size. Once many many years ago, drive size was 5.25" however those are long gone. [I know someone is going to chime in with I still run a bigfoot drive]

They fit in a standard 3.5" internal bay in your case.

 

[Rich-M]

3.5" is the standard size. Once many many years ago, drive size was 5.25" however those are long gone. [I know someone is going to chime in with I still run a bigfoot drive]

They fit in a standard 3.5" internal bay in your case.

Well now I take exception to that as every case is different as some use glides or holders that slide in and those should come with the case...but if you are adding you need to look inside and be certain the case has what you need as drives wouldn't have that. Also could be a case where you have one of those branded pc's where they are real cheapo and it's ide with a single plug on the cable and you would need two and I see no indication if your drive is sata or ide which makes a difference as sata you would need a cable and not all drives have them, same way with internal psu plug. Is there an extra? All these things need to be known if this is a first time venture.

 

[henthorn]

The computer is a couple years old and now that I have taken the cover off I see that the two hard drives that I have are 3 1/2" wide, so I guess that answers that. One of my drives is a fairly old 20 gig drive and I need a bigger one. I figure I better do it before the old one gives up although it hasn't been abused at all. Thnanks for your replies.

 

[JohnWill]

You might want to make sure that your computer will support the size drive you are purchasing. Exactly how old is the computer? What's the make/model of the system or motherboard?

 

[Rich-M]

The computer is a couple years old and now that I have taken the cover off I see that the two hard drives that I have are 3 1/2" wide, so I guess that answers that. One of my drives is a fairly old 20 gig drive and I need a bigger one. I figure I better do it before the old one gives up although it hasn't been abused at all. Thnanks for your replies.

OK and I'm glad you looked but all hard drives regardless of type are 3 1/2" wide sata and ide though it sounds like ide is what you have obviously.

 

[henthorn]

Yup, I do have IDE cables. Does that mean I can't use a sata hard drive? The hard drive bargains I see at Newegg all say they are sata.

 

[crjdriver]

Yup, I do have IDE cables. Does that mean I can't use a sata hard drive? The hard drive bargains I see at Newegg all say they are sata.

Check your board and your manual. See if you have sata connectors on the board. If not, another option is a sata controller card; these are pretty cheap and work well.

 

[brite750]

keep in mind sata is not plug and play like ide drives, drivers have to be loaded that usually come with the MB disk, ide (pata) drives still come in large sizes and are cheap, 80gig is $45ish, also if your current drive with os on it is in good shape, you can clone it to the new drive, so you dont have to reformat and load all of your programs and files.

 

[JohnWill]

Well, many MB's do support SATA drives with no drivers, as long as the drives aren't configured for RAID. It's true some MB's require drivers even for non-RAID drives, but not all boards.

 

[henthorn]

Thank, you, gentlemen. You have added some to my understanding, no small feat. I will go with a cheap IDE drive. Now I just have to go on ebay and find a cheap floppy disk cable to connect the used floppy I got so I can make a recovery disk for Partition Magic, so I can get all my data on one disk, so I can............. Well, you know.

 

[Rich-M]

Did you know you can usually find cheaper and new here:
www.pricewatch.com