Hard Drive Laying Around?

[DigitalAssassin]

My 40GB Maxtor primary drive appears to be on it's last leg. I've noticed HD access times on games getting longer and longer and I've been running CHKDSK every day or so and twice in the last 5 days it has encountered problems that need to be fixed.

So, after that long-winded introduction, anyone have any decent size drives laying around they want to get rid of? Looks like 80GB drives are ~$50 and if that's the way I should/need to go that's fine, just thought I'd check with my TG bretheren first.

[avenging llama]

Originally Posted by DigitalAssassin

My 40GB Maxtor primary drive appears to be on it's last leg. I've noticed HD access times on games getting longer and longer and I've been running CHKDSK every day or so and twice in the last 5 days it has encountered problems that need to be fixed.

So, after that long-winded introduction, anyone have any decent size drives laying around they want to get rid of? Looks like 80GB drives are ~$50 and if that's the way I should/need to go that's fine, just thought I'd check with my TG bretheren first.

If there is a Staples store near you, there is going to be a 250 gb Western Digital on sale for 89.99 on 9/3

[Scooper]

Originally Posted by avenging llama

If there is a Staples store near you, there is going to be a 250 gb Western Digital on sale for 89.99 on 9/3

Fer sher.
Better, new, bigger, faster, warrantied drives out there well within decent price ranges if you're willing and able to buy new.
If you can swing it look for a drive with a 16MB cache buffer. =performance.

[Happy Shooter]

Dont go for the really cheap peices of equipment.

Shop around aim for a nice 250gig or 300gig.

Staples deal sounds nice but if you can shop around on the internet and find one with a nice warranty and buffer.

If you have the cash go for a RAID system to ensure you can carry on gaming during a crash.

[FBmantis]

Originally Posted by avenging llama

If there is a Staples store near you, there is going to be a 250 gb Western Digital on sale for 89.99 on 9/3

Sounds like a regular price to me. Newegg sells them cheaper and its not even a sale price. I would suggest to the original poster that if he doesn't get any offers in this thread then hit up a deal site like slickdeals and monitor for nice hard drive deals for a couple days. At least one gets found almost every day...

[WhiskeySix]

http://www.bensbargains.net is a site i visit daily - some crazy good deals on there, check it out.

[Snail88]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822148066

just a quick search on new egg and i found a 200 gig for $70. Not bad.

[jmaker]

See if you look on slickdeals they just had a 400GB Seagate for $110 free shipping with a possible rebate for $26. But it expired already. That's why you have to check those sites out a few times a day, you never know how long the deal is going to last.

[BaneII]

Better to get a new one anyway. The older the drive, the higher the failure rate. And that's all I have laying around are drives that are years old. I wouldnt use them for anything important.

[jmaker]

Well here you go. 320GB for $60.

http://www.slickdeals.net/#p8038

[WhiskeySix]

Originally Posted by jmaker

Well here you go. 320GB for $60.

http://www.slickdeals.net/#p8038

good lord!

[DigitalAssassin]

Originally Posted by jmaker

Well here you go. 320GB for $60.

http://www.slickdeals.net/#p8038

+rep for jmaker!

Yep. Jumped on that as soon as jmaker sent me a PM with it. Called the closest Office Max and they were out of 320GB drives but had 2 250GB drives left. I'm upgrading from a 40GB primary drive so 250GB is plenty for the time being. Had them hold 1 for me. Ended up being $59 with tax. It's an 8MB buffer, not 16MB, but for that price I'll deal with it. Can't be any worse then my existing 40GB drive.

So, now that I've got a decent sized drive, my next question is regarding partitioning. I don't have the time or energy in the foreseeable future to install the OS and everything from scratch. Right now my 40GB drive is just one partition and I'm using ~30GB of it.

My plan is to just ghost the 40GB drive to the 250GB drive. But, before I do that, any real gains in partitioning it into smaller sizes? I have a separate 20GB drive I use for data backup (I like using a totally different physical drive in case the primary drive encounters a physical problem and goes belly up) so the whole 'just have to format and re-install the OS partition' situation doesn't really mean much to me.

If there isn't really much benefit to partitioning it into smaller sizes I'll just do a straight ghost from disk to disk and instead of ~10GB free I'll have ~220GB free.

[WhiskeySix]

lol! yeah, I'm gonna head out and grab one tomorrow as well... 4GB/dollar is a deal in my book.

[Wimpinator]

Originally Posted by DigitalAssassin

+rep for jmaker!

Yep. Jumped on that as soon as jmaker sent me a PM with it. Called the closest Office Max and they were out of 320GB drives but had 2 250GB drives left. I'm upgrading from a 40GB primary drive so 250GB is plenty for the time being. Had them hold 1 for me. Ended up being $59 with tax. It's an 8MB buffer, not 16MB, but for that price I'll deal with it. Can't be any worse then my existing 40GB drive.

So, now that I've got a decent sized drive, my next question is regarding partitioning. I don't have the time or energy in the foreseeable future to install the OS and everything from scratch. Right now my 40GB drive is just one partition and I'm using ~30GB of it.

My plan is to just ghost the 40GB drive to the 250GB drive. But, before I do that, any real gains in partitioning it into smaller sizes? I have a separate 20GB drive I use for data backup (I like using a totally different physical drive in case the primary drive encounters a physical problem and goes belly up) so the whole 'just have to format and re-install the OS partition' situation doesn't really mean much to me.

If there isn't really much benefit to partitioning it into smaller sizes I'll just do a straight ghost from disk to disk and instead of ~10GB free I'll have ~220GB free.

I just bought a WD 160GB SATA drive. I wanted to make the 160GB drive my boot drive and use my old 80GB as a spare. Teh WD drive came with an install disk that allowed me to set all of that up. It even took care of the partitioning. It seemed to work pretty well.

[DigitalAssassin]

Originally Posted by Wimpinator

I just bought a WD 160GB SATA drive. I wanted to make the 160GB drive my boot drive and use my old 80GB as a spare. Teh WD drive came with an install disk that allowed me to set all of that up. It even took care of the partitioning. It seemed to work pretty well.

I decided to stick with one partition for now. Just did a disk clone using Ghost and it took a whopping 15 minutes. Just made the 250GB the master and everything is booted up nice and speedy. Couldn't have been any easier...