Topic: Additional Drives

[av_phile1]

I've run out of IDE drive options.  I currently have all the 4 slots occupied: 1 DVD writer and 3 hard drives. I want another DVD reader/writer for R1 and also I need to expand my hard drive capacity.  My PC is getting slower as I reach 90% storage capacities on all 3 drives.  What are my options?

I can have another two(2) SATA drives that my motherboard supports.   But will I need to upgrade my 350watt power supply?

I can have an external DVD writer costing P8500 via USB.

I can have another internal DVD writer costing 4T but have to convert one of my internal HDD to external using an external housing to connect via USB.  It will cost be 2T to get the housing. 

I can have an external hard drive via USB that will cost another 8T. 

I can dispose all my current HDDs (80 and 120gbs) and get those 200GB HDDs.  This is will be quite laborious to transfer my files to the new ones.

Any more suggestions?  Thanks.

[Philander]

Get an external DVD writer in firewire interface, get a firewire card as well.

[xenxor]

I can dispose all my current HDDs (80 and 120gbs) and get those 200GB HDDs.  This is will be quite laborious to transfer my files to the new ones.

Any more suggestions?  Thanks.

how about getting one 200GB hardisk to replace the  two smallest hardisks?
this will leave you with the new 200GB and the previous largest hardisk in your PC.

as for transferring files to the new 200GB disk, and making the two replaced hardisk reusable,
how about getting a USB2-to-IDE adapter (comes with a 4-pin molex-to-220v adpapter).

[SPaCeMaN SPiFF]

why not get 2 SATA drives and leave your IDE for optical devices...  that way parehong "master" pa yung optical storage devices mo.

[av_phile1]

Thanks guys, now this is getting interesting. 

Getting external DVD writer via firewire is new to me.  I'll check this out.  Thanks Philander.  Any idea how much this cost?  Is firewire faster than USB2?  The Liteon external DVD writer with dual layer writing already cost 8T.  I wonder how much one with firewire cost. 

I guess another relevant question is, which of these options would be the most cost effective?  Meaning the most capacity for the least cost? 

[av_phile1]

how about getting one 200GB hardisk to replace the  two smallest hardisks?
this will leave you with the new 200GB and the previous largest hardisk in your PC.

as for transferring files to the new 200GB disk, and making the two replaced hardisk reusable,
how about getting a USB2-to-IDE adapter (comes with a 4-pin molex-to-220v adpapter).

Thanks. This is one option I am looking at.  I can replace the smallest IDE drive with a bigger 200gb drive and convert it to an external one via USB2 to serve as a back-up drive after I've transfered the files.  Just curious if the external drive on USB2 is just as fast as an internal one.   

[av_phile1]

why not get 2 SATA drives and leave your IDE for optical devices...  that way parehong "master" pa yung optical storage devices mo.

This is actually my first option.  But not using all 4 IDE drives for optical, just two.  I am just wondering if I have to upgrade the power supply to accommodate 2 SATA drives and 4 IDE drives.   What's the highest capacity SATA drive and how much?  Also, is it a must to have the SATA drive become the master?  As much as possible I don't want to tinker with the set-up menu and just leave the current master on IDE as is. 

[YrNeH]

try these 400GB Seagate SATA drives  ST3400832NS, ST3400632NS  and ST3400832AS  around 13K++ pesos (if converted from aussie $) but you'll be better off buying the 300GB ones as they are almost half the price of the 400GB.  i just bought a Maxtor 300Gb SATA with 16MB cache for around 6,400pesos and they are good drives. if you want longer warranty, seagate has 5years warranty and maxtor offers 3yrs(yata?).

[SPaCeMaN SPiFF]

This is actually my first option.  But not using all 4 IDE drives for optical, just two.  I am just wondering if I have to upgrade the power supply to accommodate 2 SATA drives and 4 IDE drives.   What's the highest capacity SATA drive and how much?  Also, is it a must to have the SATA drive become the master?  As much as possible I don't want to tinker with the set-up menu and just leave the current master on IDE as is. 

that depends... i normally would suggest a 450W power supply or higher... just to be on the safe side. those 300W ones just aren't enough for a "fully loaded PC".

exactly... have a sata drive lets you configure both your optical storage devices to primary master and secondary master respectively. i dunno about the others but i find it works less efficiently when you use an optical storage device on the "slave setting".

yrneh is so right... never get the biggest drive available. take a notch or two lower as the price difference decreases exponentially. (example: the price difference between a 40GB drive and an 80GB these days is barely 500 pesos... )

i don't think it would be too difficult to access your bios and set the boot sequence to start from a SATA drive... most cmos these days are so easy to configure. 

i've never been a big fan of external drives... i find their performance is often disappointing when combared to a "bay-installed" one. 

[xenxor]

I can replace the smallest IDE drive with a bigger 200gb drive and convert it to an external one via USB2 to serve as a back-up drive after I've transfered the files.  Just curious if the external drive on USB2 is just as fast as an internal one.   

for more disk-space per peso,  you could consider pouring a couple of hundreds more to get 250GB.  sayang din diba?

with regards to hardisk speed on USB2, the bottleneck lies on the chipset used by the USB2-to-IDE adapter. 

cheap USB2-to-IDE adapters (in the sub-1K peso range) typical can do 13-15 Megabytes per second (sustained).

and more expensive ones allow 22-25 Megabytes per second (sustained) which is good for maxing out 16x DVD writers.

the other key component to a good USB2-to-IDE hardware is the power adaptor.  it should be able to output the amps needed by your drive's 5V and 12V power requirement.

[xenxor]

i've never been a big fan of external drives... i find their performance is often disappointing when combared to a "bay-installed" one. 

same here.

however, for home use isn't this a sound proposition: you need bay-drives if you need your data to be online every bootup.   for archiving and on-demand data, there's dvd disks and USB2.

[av_phile1]

that depends... i normally would suggest a 450W power supply or higher... just to be on the safe side. those 300W ones just aren't enough for a "fully loaded PC".

I have this suspicion as well.

yrneh is so right... never get the biggest drive available. take a notch or two lower as the price difference decreases exponentially. (example: the price difference between a 40GB drive and an 80GB these days is barely 500 pesos... )

Yup, 250 or 300gb drives seems to be the most cost effective at the moment.

i don't think it would be too difficult to access your bios and set the boot sequence to start from a SATA drive... most cmos these days are so easy to configure. 

Wouldn't I have to re-install my OS on the master drive?  Shouldn't really be a concern, I just can't find my installation disks.    And wouldn't I need to reinstall all my device drivers as well?  That's what's halting me.  I'd have to once again look for and install these CDs.  It probably would take me the whole day to do all these.  I really just want additional storage, not to reorganize them.  Unless I really have to.   

i've never been a big fan of external drives... i find their performance is often disappointing when combared to a "bay-installed" one. 

How much of a performance degradation are we looking at?  50%?

Thanks again, Spaceman 

[av_phile1]

try these 400GB Seagate SATA drives  ST3400832NS, ST3400632NS  and ST3400832AS  around 13K++ pesos (if converted from aussie $) but you'll be better off buying the 300GB ones as they are almost half the price of the 400GB.  i just bought a Maxtor 300Gb SATA with 16MB cache for around 6,400pesos and they are good drives. if you want longer warranty, seagate has 5years warranty and maxtor offers 3yrs(yata?).

6T - 7T would fit well with my budget for hard drive.  Will check out 300GB SATA drives locally.  Thanks.

[av_phile1]

for more disk-space per peso,  you could consider pouring a couple of hundreds more to get 250GB.  sayang din diba?

with regards to hardisk speed on USB2, the bottleneck lies on the chipset used by the USB2-to-IDE adapter. 

cheap USB2-to-IDE adapters (in the sub-1K peso range) typical can do 13-15 Megabytes per second (sustained).

and more expensive ones allow 22-25 Megabytes per second (sustained) which is good for maxing out 16x DVD writers.

the other key component to a good USB2-to-IDE hardware is the power adaptor.  it should be able to output the amps needed by your drive's 5V and 12V power requirement.

There are quite a few brands and choices of external HDD housings I saw at Villman and other computer shops at Park Square.   Mostly in the 2T range.  Any brand I should look for?   Thanks.

[SPaCeMaN SPiFF]

How much of a performance degradation are we looking at?  50%?

Thanks again, Spaceman 

xensor has pretty much said it all... if it's 2.0... maybe not as much. i had the unfortunate experience of using an external USB CD writer a long time ago... and i had more than a fair share of coasters from that.

i suppose it's a safe assumption that you can probably get, at most, 90% efficiency with an external drive. consider this: with a UDMA mode 4 you get a maximum throughput of 66.7 MB/s. compared to a "good" USB 2.0 external one that avarages to about half that.)

as for the drivers... why not just get them from internet? check your peripheral and MOBO vendor's website ... most will probably offer you updated drivers or mabe even an updated BIOS by now. 

[YrNeH]

Wouldn't I have to re-install my OS on the master drive?  Shouldn't really be a concern, I just can't find my installation disks.    And wouldn't I need to reinstall all my device drivers as well?  That's what's halting me.  I'd have to once again look for and install these CDs.  It probably would take me the whole day to do all these.  I really just want additional storage, not to reorganize them.  Unless I really have to.   

maybe you won't have to do this. try ghosting or creating an image of the harddisk and restore it on the new one (SATA?).  maybe someone can lend you the software and help you do it.  kung nasa pilipinas lang ako, di ka magdadalawang salita

[voj]

Intel will start selling this next month. 4 hot swappable hard disk on an appliance with its own processor.  If you use RAID 0 and 250gb hard disks, you would have 1 terrabyte of online memory!  Enough to store all your downloads plus some!  Using a more robust RAID 5, you would have an error proof system, even if 1 hard disk fails.

This is being marketed for small and medium business but I got excited with its DIGITAL HOME possibilities.

Best of all, the price is $600 (without hard disks).  That price break intro would surely go down over time and I expect other companies to introduce similar products.  I actually saw one with only 2 hot swappable bay for $349 but I can't seem to find the site again.

Imagine not needing to transfer to DVDR's all your downloads just to be able to see them.  This would be a nice addition to an ideal HTPC.





To go back to topic, you do not need to replace your power supply.  Just take the additional drives outside the system. 
Sure, it might still be expensive for now, but wait awhile.  I would have proposed an interim solution of an external drive enclosure for your extra drives but this system uses SATA drives and I have not yet looked at existence of external hard drive systems for SATA, so I don't have any idea if its possible or if it is costly.

[uvax]

I've run out of IDE drive options.  I currently have all the 4 slots occupied: 1 DVD writer and 3 hard drives. I want another DVD reader/writer for R1 and also I need to expand my hard drive capacity.  My PC is getting slower as I reach 90% storage capacities on all 3 drives.  What are my options?

You don't actually need to install another DVD reader/writer just for have R1. There is software available that can mask the drive's region setting. No need to flash the DVD drive's firmware.

[av_phile1]

You don't actually need to install another DVD reader/writer just for have R1. There is software available that can mask the drive's region setting. No need to flash the DVD drive's firmware.

I've tried the software solution, I think it's a freeware, RegionFreeDVD or something.  But it wasn't doing the job.  So I thought a hardware solution is in order.  Would appreciate a software you could direct me to.  Thanks. 

[sayad5]

anydvd by slysoft

http://www.slysoft.com/en/anydvd.html


hope this info helps

[SPaCeMaN SPiFF]

anydvd by slysoft

http://www.slysoft.com/en/anydvd.html


hope this info helps

yeah... it seems anydvd is better. just found out about it now... 

[av_phile1]

Intel will start selling this next month. 4 hot swappable hard disk on an appliance with its own processor.  If you use RAID 0 and 250gb hard disks, you would have 1 terrabyte of online memory!  Enough to store all your downloads plus some!  Using a more robust RAID 5, you would have an error proof system, even if 1 hard disk fails.

This is being marketed for small and medium business but I got excited with its DIGITAL HOME possibilities.

Best of all, the price is $600 (without hard disks).  That price break intro would surely go down over time and I expect other companies to introduce similar products.  I actually saw one with only 2 hot swappable bay for $349 but I can't seem to find the site again.

Imagine not needing to transfer to DVDR's all your downloads just to be able to see them.  This would be a nice addition to an ideal HTPC.





To go back to topic, you do not need to replace your power supply.  Just take the additional drives outside the system. 
Sure, it might still be expensive for now, but wait awhile.  I would have proposed an interim solution of an external drive enclosure for your extra drives but this system uses SATA drives and I have not yet looked at existence of external hard drive systems for SATA, so I don't have any idea if its possible or if it is costly.

This is a neat solution.  Hope it gets priced for the home market. 

I had thought of using external drives via USB and I understand they would still get their power via USB connection.  So wouldn't this also tax the internal power supply? 

[av_phile1]

Thanks Sayad, will download the trial version.

[uvax]

I am using DVD Region+CSS Free. I like this one better than AnyDVD. AnyDVD is always active in the background (you'll see it on your systray) whereas DVD Region+CSS Free will launch only when needed. This means it won't use your pc's resources until you need it.

Anyway it's more a matter of preference. I have AnyDVD installed in my kids' pc and it works fine there too.

[SPaCeMaN SPiFF]

I am using DVD Region+CSS Free. I like this one better than AnyDVD. AnyDVD is always active in the background (you'll see it on your systray) whereas DVD Region+CSS Free will launch only when needed. This means it won't use your pc's resources until you need it.

Anyway it's more a matter of preference. I have AnyDVD installed in my kids' pc and it works fine there too.

not true. you can disable anydvd from "running at boot" anytime. its just a setting...  just uncheck anydvd's "autostart" in the "program" tab of the settings.

dvd region-free is able to automatically launch itslef by hooking into the computer's API (application programming interface) calls, and personally, i am not comfortable with programs lauching without my knowledge. i wanna know what program launches everytime i click on an app shortcut and not have something work in the background without my knkowledge. that said... you're right. it's a preference thing. so anydvd works fine for me.

also, i tried using dvd region free while backing up some new copy protected discs (as a test, i was backing up the new dvd version of "the breakfast club") with nero's recode (their version of dvdshrink), guess what? they didn't work. nero kept telling me the disc was copy-protected even tho dvdidle/dvd region-free was running  ... which i found strange because dvd decrypter and dvd shrink had no trouble bypassing the copy protection. but when i tried using nero recode with anydvd... it worked. 

[av_phile1]

I finally got a 200GB seagate baracuda last weekend for 5.4T.  Also got a 1.3T nameless external HDD case for the old 80GB it replaced.  Interestingly enough, the external HDD throughput seems just as fast on USB2 when accessing video and pic files.  And for the DVD player, i got software assitance to make it region free courtesy of Yrneh.  Thanks.  So this relieves my PC storage problems maybe for the next year or so.  My unbranded P4 2.4Ghz PC will be 3 years old in July and is doing a good job so far. 

Maybe an upgrade to a new PC will be in order by next year with really huge storage.  Medyo OT but what do you guys think should be my upgrade path for a mulitmedia PC?

[BongerDude]

I finally got a 200GB seagate baracuda last weekend for 5.4T.  Also got a 1.3T nameless external HDD case for the old 80GB it replaced.  Interestingly enough, the external HDD throughput seems just as fast on USB2 when accessing video and pic files.  And for the DVD player, i got software assitance to make it region free courtesy of Yrneh.  Thanks.  So this relieves my PC storage problems maybe for the next year or so.  My unbranded P4 2.4Ghz PC will be 3 years old in July and is doing a good job so far. 

Maybe an upgrade to a new PC will be in order by next year with really huge storage.  Medyo OT but what do you guys think should be my upgrade path for a mulitmedia PC?

Sir, ok pa yang pc mo kasi hindi naman masyadong taxing sa resources ang multimedia pc kung gagamitin mo sya as player lang o for streaming audio. Suggestion ko lang sir upgrade mo power supply mo. HEC POWEROP or Antec 475 watts pataas. I've had bad experiences with enermax power supplies. 2 na bumibigay na enermax saken. Yung mga HEC ko matagal na matibay pa rin. Naooverlook kasi naten minsan ang power supply sa pc. Sa pc ko for video editing HEC gamit ko, ang load nya 7 hard drives 1 dvd writer. Ok pa sya hanggang ngayon. Halos 15 hours a day nakabukas at Full load yun.


Sa cooling, upgrade nyo rin yung heatsink/fan sa processor. I suggest Gigabyte 3d rocket cooler pro. Tahimik pero -7 degrees celsius ang improvement saken with arctic silver 5.  Tsaka casing pala. Ano casing gamit nyo? suggestion lang po yung may enough cooling at aluminum and build. Try Lian Li.

[av_phile1]

Thanks, BongerDude.  I've been advised the same thing.  I don't exactly recall the power specs, but I think my PC has just your vanilla PC power supply with 300watts or even 250watts.  Right now, I have all the IDE slots used and a USB port that also powers a cheap Flatbed scanner.  So far, I've had no problems with the power supply.  Would you know what symptoms to expect with power supplies that can't keep up?? 

I was advised to get a more powerful one should I get a SATA drive in addition to my 4 IDE drives.  The 450watts power supply I inquired cost around 1.5T.  Is this good enough?  A 200GB SATA drive plus power supply would have cost me more than using an external drive with its own power supply, so I opted with the latter.  I had the old 80GB drive replaced with a 200GB IDE drive and used an external housing with its own power for the old drive.  It was actually a gamble and was pleasantly surprised an external HDD isn't as slow as some said.

But I guess, sooner or later, I would need to replace the power supply if I stick with this PC for much longer.  I mean, I know I can have as many external USB drives as I want, but they won't look neat stacked up outside the CPU box.  And the risk of one falling and getting damaged goes up.  Also, if I want another PCI card, say a video capture card, I definitely would need a more powerful power supply.

I think you're right, my PC can probably see another 3 years down the road with just a power supply upgrade.  Until the new HD-DVD and Blu-ray discs get PC-readers/writers and format decoder on PCI cards as well.   

[slowhand]

Funny you guys should be talking about this. My PC's power supply gave up the other day. It was a 300-watter. Changed it to a 450-watt one for 995 at PC Express. My drive bays are full, and so are my USB drives.

Heat of summer + three-year-old PC + too many power-hungry devices = I needed a new power supply

av_phile, maybe preventive maintenance wouldn't hurt?

[av_phile1]

Sir, ok pa yang pc mo kasi hindi naman masyadong taxing sa resources ang multimedia pc kung gagamitin mo sya as player lang o for streaming audio. Suggestion ko lang sir upgrade mo power supply mo. HEC POWEROP or Antec 475 watts pataas. I've had bad experiences with enermax power supplies. 2 na bumibigay na enermax saken. Yung mga HEC ko matagal na matibay pa rin. Naooverlook kasi naten minsan ang power supply sa pc. Sa pc ko for video editing HEC gamit ko, ang load nya 7 hard drives 1 dvd writer. Ok pa sya hanggang ngayon. Halos 15 hours a day nakabukas at Full load yun.


Sa cooling, upgrade nyo rin yung heatsink/fan sa processor. I suggest Gigabyte 3d rocket cooler pro. Tahimik pero -7 degrees celsius ang improvement saken with arctic silver 5.  Tsaka casing pala. Ano casing gamit nyo? suggestion lang po yung may enough cooling at aluminum and build. Try Lian Li.

I should take note of the brands you mentioned. A 475-watt HEC for power supply and Gigabyte 3D rocket cooler.  I am no geek on these things.

The casing I have is just your generic server-type one.   I've seen some fancy looking and relatively larger server-type casing with plastic see-through sides and additional cooling fans costing upwards of 5T.  I really didn't consider this as an important aspect for a PC. Only now.  So if I have to upgrade by next year, maybe a change of casing with higher power and better cooling will do.  Thanks.