Need suggestion for HDD upgrade

[harkit]

Hello everyone,

This is my first post in this forum.
I need suggestion for upgrading my Hard drive space. My machine config is as follows:

CPU: AMD Athlon XP 1.7+
Motherboard: ASUS A7N266-VM
HDD: 40 GB
RAM: 1GB SD DDR

I heard that adding a 160GB HDD to my machine would slow down or even crash my machine. Please let me know what HD capacity I can add to my machine.
Also let me know which one is better - Samsung or Seagate?

Thanks

 

[SNGX1275]

If you have XP with Service Pack 2 and your latest BIOS there is no size PATA/IDE drive you can't put in.

 

[harkit]

Forgot to post OS info. I have XP with SP2. But I have not updated BIOS even once.
If I update the BIOS, can I add a 160 GB HDD (to the existing 40 GB) with out having the machine slow down?

 

[SNGX1275]

Yep. May even be able to get away with it without a BIOS update, I forget if that one required one or not. The machine may even slightly speed up if you moved your pagefile over to the new drive. Or better yet cloned your 40 to the 160 and then used the 160 as your OS drive.

 

[harkit]

hi, i want to highlight one thing here, and that is the old configuration of my machine. Since my machine config is old, can I still add a 160 GB HDD. I heard that 160 GB HDD might be too heavy for my motherboard (ASUS A7N266-VM) to handle. Please suggest.
Thanks

 

[Daveskater]

as long as you have a spare ide or sata connection then you should be able to connect the drive up. i added a 160gb drive to my pc and keeping my old 40gb one in, i'd suggest using the 160gb drive as your main one with the OS on it, but it's up to you really.

hard drives are onlyt connected to your motherboard via a cable and the case holds the weight of it unless you mean heavy in a different sense.

you might not need a bios update because when i attached my 160gb drive my bios was the original one from 2002 and everythign worked fine, although i would google it with your motherboard to make sure you don't need an update.

also personally i'd go with a seagate drive or a western digital but it depends on your budget really.

 

[SNGX1275]

The thing is that is a VERY common motherboard, and my guess was there will be absolutely no problem even hooking up the largest PATA/IDE drive you can buy right now. The ONLY reason I could think that it wouldn't work is because of an old OS that hasn't been updated to accept larger than 127GB hard drives, or your BIOS didn't support it. Which would have been fixed a long time ago because of the popularity of that board. It will probably work right away without a BIOS update, I was just throwing that out there as something to be aware of.

You get screwed on the price per gigabyte if you go with a 160, so it might be worth spending $10-$15 more and getting a 300-500 gig drive, or at least 200.

 

[Daveskater]

yeah price per gigabytes are always something to look out for, you can end up spending a little bit mre but getting a lot better value.

i bought my 160gb western digital drive from eBay, (where i buy most of my stuff haha) for £33 which is about $65. although it is said that we live in "rip-off Britain" so it would probably be a lot cheaper in the US.

 

[Rage_3K_Moiz]

The only factor that might cause the HDD not to work might be an inadequate PSU, so check that beforehand. I don't think it should be a problem though, unless its wattage is lower than 300W.