Hard Disk Types?

[tony draper]

What's the difference betwixt a UDMA Hard Disk an a IDE one? looking to buy a new one as a spare and looking at the price list there does not seem to be much difference in the price or speed, ie 7200.
Not having a lot of luck with Hard Disk this will be the third since I built this machine a couple of years ago,they are cheap enough now but they do not seem to last as long as the old one's from a few years ago,had a coupe of IBM Deskstars that I had to practically wack with a hammer to finish them off.
:uhoh:

[Shunter]

I wouldn't touch deskstars with a bargepole. Western Digital or Seagate all the way.

IDE and UDMA are different things. IDE is the controller, and UDMA is the protocol used for the communication. All drives you can buy these days will support UDMA, the main difference is whether they're IDE or SATA. IDE is the big rectangular socket type, and SATA is a little L-shaped socket. Almost all PC vendors are only producing SATA equipped machines these days.

If your motherboard doesn't have SATA, probably best getting an IDE drive. 7200rpm with an 8Mb cache will get you the best performance.

[tony draper]

Another quick question,installing a hard disk as a slave then opening My Computer and right clicking on same,then clicking the Format option I only seem to have the option of formating in the NTFS file system and also it reportd the Disk as 149 gig as opposed to the 160 that it is.
I have done this twice now with different HDs,when formated I install as master then go to reload the operating system windows setup then asks to format them again as the disk capacity is wrong.
Woss going on?
:confused:

[stagger]

The way hard drive manufacturers advertise disk sizes means that a 149 GB drive is sold as a 160 GB. This is standard practice.

Your computer defines a GB as 1,073,741,824 bytes

Hard drive manufacturers define a GB as only 1,000,000,000 bytes

So your drive has 160,000,000,000 bytes which is 160 GB according to the but only 149 GB according to your computer.

You can see here (your computer uses kilo = 1024, HD manufacturers use kilo = 1000)

http://www.matisse.net/bitcalc/

[Saab Dastard]

Tony D -

I suggest you read an article on HDDs from wikipedia or similar.

The current disk interface standards are SCSI (not relevant here) and Advanced Technology Attachment (ATA). ATA can be further divided into 2 types, Parallel (original) and Serial (recent and future). Abbreviated to PATA and SATA respectively.

To confuse things, the older PATA was - and still is - known as IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics), even though this was always a misnomer, stemming from the original practice prior to ATA disks of having the HD electronics on the controller card rather than the drive itself.

So IDE currently - if erroneously - is synonymous with PATA.

Direct Memory Access is a technology used to speed up disk access - and system performance - by allowing the CPU to be bypassed, so that data can be passed directly from the disk to memory registers. As system interface and disk speeds increased, so did the mode of DMA - now at UltraDMA 5, corresponding to the ATA100 (100 MB/s) standard.

So, SCSI, SATA and PATA are all incompatible drive interfaces.

PATA is also known as IDE, and basically all IDE / PATA devices are compatible, and can be interchanged without problem - however, a new high-speed PATA disk will not be able to operate at full speed in an older system incapable of supporting the transfer rate of the disk.

Note also that UDMA 3 and above require the use of an 80-wire cable, rather than the older 40-wire cables.

SD

[frostbite]

Things were so much simpler when we all used tape cassettes.

[tony draper]

Whilst I'm on a roll, one more question,is it possible to put a totally virgin newly formatted Hard Disk in as a slave and copy the master across to this in its entirety ie,operating system and setting installed drivers,all ones documents and folders,so it is identical and all ready to stick in as master and boot from?
:confused:

[Saab Dastard]

Not by copying files as you suggest - it would not copy the MBR.

What you CAN do is to use Ghost or similar disk imaging software to make a block-by-block image, which WOULD then be bootable as you require.

SD

[tony draper]

Ah well, one won't bother,just do as I have been doing stick the new disk in as master after I have loaded operating system and drivers,stick the old disk in as slave and copy all the folders I want to keep across,seems like I have been doing nowt else for the last week.
One more question please, just been looking at the BACKUP function,where exactly is the backup stored?doesn't seem to be much point backing stuff up the same hard disk as that defeats the purpose.
The disk I have in at the moment has about 15 G of 160 G used up,surely this is to much data to be stored on one CD?
:uhoh:

[Parapunter]

Amen to that, I use Acronis True Image which does the same thing as Norton Ghost & it has saved the day for me when a hard drive went pop. This of course after I'd learnt the hard way.

I would never, ever rely on the longevity of components no matter what is claimed by the manufacturers; been bitten too many times not to have some form of built in recovery.

[tony draper]

I have always had two hard disk,one in the machine and another with operating system drivers all me precious folders ect kept on the book shelf ready to be whipped in in seconds should I have trouble with the master,problem is both hards disks have probs,frinstance this one I'm working with now is very reluctant to boot,one can get it to do so eventually using secret methods known only to meself, tother one keeps booting into safe mode but is ok when I tell it to boot from the last known good configuration.
So one intends to nip out tomorrow and purchase another to us as a spare,lord knows they are cheap enough.
Thanks for the help chaps.
The reason I asked the first seemingly daft question is this price list shows some disks as just IDE and others as UDMA? one would try SATA but I understand machines don't like having a SATA and IDE trying to work together,leastwise that is what I understood.
May as well ask one more question,can one have a SATA master and a IDE slave?

[Saab Dastard]

The Backup function was originally designed to backup to tape. You can back up to an optical medium - but only if that is larger than the data volume that you are backing up, so CD really doesn't cut it any more. DVD is possible, up to 4 or 8GB.

You can back up to an external disk - usually USB, although a networked device should also work - even a mapped drive on another PC.

SD

[gingernut]

Things were so much simpler when we all used tape cassettes.


get y'self a bubble memory:}

[ORAC]

Ferrite core, now there was memory you get your hands on.......

[Bushfiva]

May as well ask one more question,can one have a SATA master and a IDE slave?

SATA doesn't have the master/slave concept. "Master" and "Slave" is an IDE thing: it typically depends on which one of two drives is at the end of the drive cable, or how the jumpers are set on each drive.

I suspect you mean "boot priority", which can typically be set in the BIOS.

However, since you're asking about SATA, I suspect you won't have any SATA connectors inside your computer, so if you're talking about mounting a drive internally, you'll be wanting IDE (unless you buy a SATA card for the motherboard). If you're contemplating an external drive in a USB case, then whether it's IDE or SATA is irrelevant, since the computer will see the USB.

[Saab Dastard]

I understand machines don't like having a SATA and IDE trying to work together,leastwise that is what I understood.

It is perfectly possible - in fact normal - to have both SATA and PATA (IDE) in the same system. As Bushfiva mentions, the boot priority needs to be set in the BIOS, assuming both interfaces are built in to the motherboard.

Just remember that they are entirely separate interfaces with entirely separate cables.

SD

[Keef]

The other thing that's getting to Sir D is the relative reliability of hard drives.

My "old clunker" Linux machine has a Seagate drive in it that came when the machine was new in 1998. That's still working fine. The 30GB Western Digital that I bought for it in 2004 packed up last year.

Somewhere on the electric internet there is a site with "relative reliability" of various brands of hard drive. I was very surprised when I saw it, and went out and bought for my backup facility a Quantum USB drive (said at the time to be the best of the lot). It packed up after a few months, and when I opened the nice Quantum box, the drive inside said "Maxtor" (definitely in the "vom Kauf abzuraten" end of the spectrum).

[Parapunter]

It is apparently quite common for HDDs' to be branded & actually constructed by a separate manufacturer. Google did a study into HDD reliability, since they build their servers with off the shelf compnents & found a lot of the thing came down to temperature, humidity, thermal shock etc.

It is such an ache when one goes though.:ugh:

[nitro rig driver]

Silly question from a computer numpty.

With the advances in technolgy etc why are we still using hard drives that rotate and will eventually fail (just unknown when) .
Is it not possable to go solid state and remove the mechanical element


is just a pysical size issue

[Bushfiva]

Is it not possable to go solid state and remove the mechanical element

Yes it is, but there is a cost penalty right now. There's also real-world speed penalty with some brands, and there may be a reliability penalty. When SSDs are cheaper than HDs, that will be the time to buy. The industry will migrate at the right time, everyone else is paying a premium to be an early adopter. Incidentally, there's not necessarily anything wrong with mechanical stuff: cars, aircraft and most domestic gadgets are full of bits that move and/or rotate. Hard drives are a very robust technology, and can even anticipate their own demise. The fact that no current OS reports, or even looks at, their warnings says more about the OS than about drive technology. Through a third-party utility, my notebook drive is currently reporting potential failure around 2013 because of its start-up performance. At the same time, there's never been a read or write error, which is reassuring.

[Saab Dastard]

nitro rig driver,

Not a silly question - just need to do your research (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-state_drive)! Solid state hard drives do exist and have been around for a while, but it's only fairly recently that the price of flash memory has dropped to the point that it is even remotely comparable to a conventional HDD.

NB - refer particularly to the "Disadvantages" section in the Wiki article!

SD

[nitro rig driver]

Thanks SD-wrist considered slapped !!!

still wundering if i should buy a portable drive to backup my computer just incase of a terminal HDD.(after all its a time machine of several yrs old)
i know the sensible answer is yes just need to get round to it.:O

[Saab Dastard]

nitro rig driver,

No wrist slap intended.

Back it up sooner rather than too late! :ok:

A 500GB USB disk can be yours for about £75-80. No excuse not to, really.

SD

[batninth]

When SSDs are cheaper than HDs, that will be the time to buy.

My brain aches too much to do the maths now, but I suspect that there could well be a long-term power issue to consider with solid state meory as well as the fact that solid state is transient if you want the high speed of access.

I guess the power thing is getting more even when considered up against disc devices - the density of memory circuits on silicon gives off a lot of heat which means that it's consuming & expending power. Discs also give off heat as they need to spin the discs so that is a close one. Given the density of the data per sq cm that we're getting on discs now I'd estimate it's a close call if you measured current consumed per MB of data stored.

To get high speed with solid state memory you also need to use dynamic storage, ie capacitive, which tends to leak & thus need refreshing, again consuming power & giving a potential for loss of the data if the power fails. On discs you're switching magnetic polarity so the data tends to be held without a need for power to keep it there.

All of this could be moot anyway, as we get high speed data networks & the wider availability of hosted services it'll be easier to let someone else worry about the storage while you just connect from anywhere & access your data.

BTW - Can anyone explain why my brilliant idea to make discs square & store additional data on the corners never took off :O

[Bushfiva]

there could well be a long-term power issue to consider with solid state meory as well as the fact that solid state is transient if you want the high speed of access

Slightly over-generalizing, no computer will ever take more power than your lightbulbs, water heater, etc. If you don't replace all your light bulbs with CFs and turn them all off relgiously when you're not in the room, if you don't always dry your wash off-peak, then don't worry about your computer. It spends most of its life waiting for you to press the next key.

I deal with "SSD is really important" fanatics all the time. I do believe SSD will win out very soon, but right now I do two things: provide said fanatico with a second battery, and book said fanatico onto flights with seat power.

I personally believe that the battle isn't between SSD and HD, but between SSD and fuel cells. When you can recharge a notebook in 2 minutes, who cares what the battery life is? People think they are concerned about battery life, but actually they are concerned about recharge/tether time.

[cats_five]

<snip>
if you don't always dry your wash off-peak
<snip>

I dry mine in the garden for most of the year - it's free, and it smells good afterwards. I live north of Edinburgh.