hard drive upgrade

[ozasaurus]

I have a Micron system with a Promise® Ultra66 PCI IDE Controller Card and a Western Digital Revolution 15.3GB Ultra DMA/66 IDE Hard Drive. What is my best option for adding another drive? Will I need a new controller card for a new drive? Will the old drive work with the new card?

[mjc]

What exactly are you looking for...more space or a faster drive? both?

If you are wanting a faster drive then going to an ATA/100 interface and a 7200rpm drive will get you faster, but you will need a new card. However, your old drive will still work on the new card.

If you just want more space an ATA/100 drive will work on the 66 card but not at its optimal speed ...and a 7200rpm drive is faster than a 5400rpm one at any ATA rating.

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mjc
Links list:Computer Links (http://www.dreamwater.org/tech/mjc/index.htm)

Celts are the men that heaven made mad, For all their battles are merry and their songs are all sad.

[saphalline]

All that ATA/66 vs ATA/100 is just talk. Most ATA/100 drives only spike above 66MBps during burst reads/writes, if at all. During continuous workloads, an ATA/100 drive works just as well on ATA/66, which is to say somewhere around 30-45MBps. And since any ATA PCI IDE card (regardless of speed) has two IDE channels capable of 2 devices per channel (4 total hard drives or CD drives), you shouldn't need to buy anything except another hard drive.

Currently, 30GB drives are dirt cheap even at 7200rpm, but if you want a real boost in size, 60GB is sweet. Don't get anything slower than 7200rpm, though, it generally isn't worth the performance cut. Western Digital hard drives have an excellent price/performance ratio, they even offer "liquid bearing" drives which are supposed to be quieter and more reliable. Other than that, there's the IBM 60GXP series (which boast glass platters), Maxtor hard drives, and a few other brands.

The only real difference is that ATA/100 hard drives have been getting a little more tweaked, so as long as you get an ATA/100 hard drive at 7200rpm between 30GB and 60GB (or more if you prefer), you can't go wrong. No extra IDE card needed, but you may need to get another IDE cable. The 80 conductor kind, not 40 conductor. The cable should be rated true ATA/100.

[ozasaurus]

OK. I found this great deal on the new Western Digital 7200 RPM Special Edition 120GB Ultra ATA/100 hard drive with 8MB cache for $188 from Dell upgrade center. It lists for $235 with 20% off (shows in your cart) until March 25. Take a look:
http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.asp?TabPage=ProductHighlights&sku=340-3277&spagenum=1&category_id=36&keyword=&mnf=&prst=0&prEnd=0&mnfsku=&orderby=&searchtype=&cust omer_id=19&pageb4search=&page=productlisting.asp&instock=0&refurbished=

Tomshardware has a nice review of this drive, too.
http://www4.tomshardware.com/storage/02q1/020305/index.html

If I get this great drive, what brand/type of controller card should I get? Are there certain features I should look for in a controller card?

Then, how hard is it relocate my operating system (Windows 98) to the new drive?