Help installing a SATA HDD

[nikkhasnsi]

Hello,

I ordered a SATA internal HDD, but did a mistake. I didn't realize that it is a bare drive. rather I did not now what a bare drive meant. The drive I ordered is HITACHI Deskstar 5K3000 HDS5C3020ALA632.

I plan to use it as my 2nd HDD. Can someone please give me instruction to install it? Also, I think I need a Serial ATA interface cable, how do I select one or are they generic?
And what kind of screws do I use?

Thanks

 

[EXCellR8]

yea so basically you will get just the drive in a anti-static bag, but you can use any SATA interface cable. i forget the thread size of the screw, but it's either the coarse or fine type that is used throughout the system. just take one screw out of one of the expansion slots and try it. i forget which one is more common for HDD as i use tool-less bays.

 

[nikkhasnsi]

I guess I can always take 2 screws from the existing drive and use them for the new one.

I just found another thing. I have an old PC which might not support SATA 3. Any ideas anyone?

Drive that dell.com indicates is compatible with my Vostro 200 - Western Digital Caviar Black WD1002FAEX 1TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

Derive I bought - HITACHI Deskstar 5K3000 HDS5C3020ALA632 (0F12117) 2TB 32MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

Correct me if I am wrong, but SATA 3 essentially means a transfer speed of 6GB/s. So if the WD HDD is compatible, then the one I bought (Hitachi) should be as well. Is this correct?

 

[Tmagic650]

The transfer speeds don't matter. What ever drive the motherboard will support, this will determine the transfer speed. You will need a SATA data cable, and a SATA power connector for each SATA drive. They can be purchased at Radio Shack or Best Buy I am sure. I have plastic bags full of the SATA cables. If a motherboard has no SATA connectors you can purchase a SATA PCI card that has 2 or more SATA connectors

 

[nikkhasnsi]

My motherboard has another unused SATA connector and the current HDD power cord has another connector. I have ordered a SATA connector (Cables To Go 18" 7-pin 180° to 90° 1-Device Serial ATA Cable Model 10181) on newegg. Hope fully that works.

There is a Hitachi utility called feature Tool available on their site. It seems I can use it to configure the HDD properties. Hopefully it works. It creates a bootable disk.

 

[Tmagic650]

Yeah the Hitachi tool will make the new drive, the boot drive

 

[nikkhasnsi]

OK, so I was able to install my new HDD. My SATA cable has not yet arrived, so used one from my CD drive temporarily.

After installing, I was able to go to Admin tool (via control panel) -> create and format hard disk partitions. Then initialize the HDD and create 4 partitions.

Am trying to copy files from my my old HDD to new. The transfer rate is slow; about 10-20 MB/sec. Is that normal? Can I improve it?

I just notices. the partition I am trying to copy the file to shows up as a Logical Drive while the other partitions indicate Primary Partitions. Can this be the cause for the slow transfer? How do I change it from Logical Drive to Primary Partition?

 

[Tmagic650]

2TB drive? I have 3 drives. 2 500GB and 1 450GB, totaling a 1 TB RAID array. The 450GB drive makes up the overhead after formatting the 2 500GB drives... The 3 drives represent 1 active partition. The 2TB drives are huge and the transfers can take a while. Yes because you are copying from a primary to a logical partition, it is slower. I don't know if you can convert it with out loosing data

 

[nikkhasnsi]

2TB. 465GB+488GB+488GB+420GB = 1861GB. Lost about 140GB.

 

[Tmagic650]

I looked back to your first post here. I changed my last post... My RAID array is actually 1.09TB. With your 4 partitions are they C, D, E, F with your CD/DVD drive disconnected?

 

[nikkhasnsi]

Right now 1 of my DVD drives is disconnected as I needed the SATA cable for the new HDD. Once I get the SATA cable I ordered, I will reconnect my DVD drive.

The partitions are E,F,G and H.

The data I am copying is already backed up on an external HDD. So I can reformat the partition, no problem.

My primary drive is nearly full, so my plan is to install any new application/game on the new HDD. Will that be possible?