Need help- Buying an Internal HDD

[sdk]

Hello Folks, I am a newbie here and need your help/advice for buying an HDD

My computer system has the following specs:
P4 , 3Ghz, 1GB RAM DDR1, 80 GB HDD; I know my system is highly outdated but my present concern is space. I am out of space and have to delete stuff every time i use this old fella to avoid windows low disk notifications...

Now, due to my study requirements I need space (at-least a TB) for storing various video lectures and stuff, plus i want the data rate to be at least decent enough to move/record videos as they are streamed online. These lectures I am talking about are "one time" deals and I can't afford to lose them once I have them in my system (coz if i do, chances are that i won't be able to buy them back).

Now every time I plan(or i may say "pledge") to buy an internal HDD, i come across online reviews about crashing/dead seagate drives, folks keeping their hdd's in freezers for data recovery or a guy cursing his hdd for low data transfer speeds; all this makes my plan to get postponed and i end up struggling with my 80GB good old hdd.

Please advice me on -
1. Buying a decent(but not overpriced) hdd for my requirements
2. If I run my old 80 GB with this new hdd, will i have a performance decrease?
3. Above all, can my pc's present configuration deal with this much storage efficiently?
4. What other hardware upgrades i must do for meeting my requirements?

P.S.- Sorry for the long write up, I know my system is very much a harrapa civilisation stuff but currently my preferance is storage and decent computer speed, any kind of help is highly appreciated

 

[whitestar_999]

the golden rule of storage:always have a backup in a different disk.
if you are sure that you need at least 1tb & stuff is too important start saving money to buy 2 1tb hdd one from seagate & one from WD.if stuff can be accommodated within 500gb buy 2 500gb hdd again one from seagate & one from WD.luck is a major factor here because there are people running seagate without issues for years & then there are people running WD with no problems for years.

storage has no relation with pc configuration.data rate will be sufficient to capture streaming videos over net.data rate is significant only when capturing live HD stream from surveillance camera/HDTV.

 

[sdk]

Thanks a lot for your prompt reply,

If I consider the following options, which is the best one?

WD 1 TB Desktop Internal Hard Drive (WD10EUCX) @ Rs. 5399
WD Caviar Blue 500 GB Desktop Internal Hard Drive (WD5000AAKX) @ Rs. 3710
WD Caviar Green 2 TB Desktop Internal Hard Drive (WD20EARX) @ Rs. 6703

 

[Naxal]

Why buying internal HDD ?? Externals are not too costly over similar size internal by the way

 

[sdk]

Hey, Thanks Naxal for the advice,
External HDD option looks cool,
btw in your view if i run Windows XP and 7 on dual boot and have some games and applications(like office, PS, etc), 80 GB space will be enough?
Plus if I play videos directly from External HDD, will I have any technical issues?
P.S. - I have heard of WD My Passport 1 TB External HDD; give your views about it, pls suggest if you know about any other good option...

 

[akky89]

IMO you can go with seagate/WD 1TB hdd...
both are good and its just a matter of luck that your drive will freeze or something like that...

and you can do one more thing... back-up all your data into DVDs too and spend some money in buying the cases or a good case
don't use these DVDs for anything other then just a backup if your hdd fails...
this is a cheap solution to backup everything... ( and i know its time consuming and quite boring ... )

i also did the same with my stuff too... just one advice don't lend them to anyone specially your friends ....
you'll be good to go for years..

cheer!

 

[whitestar_999]

don't buy hard disk(internal or external) online(my personal view regarding price & handling).if you can afford to go to a major pc market like nehru place,delhi;lamington road,mumbai;similar in bangalore,kolkata,chennai then buy from there.if not then try major pc market in your area.

 

[akky89]

don't buy hard disk(internal or external) online(my personal view regarding price & handling).if you can afford to go to a major pc market like nehru place,delhi;lamington road,mumbai;similar in bangalore,kolkata,chennai then buy from there.if not then try major pc market in your area.

dude buying online is not a problem at all...
i have brought many products online they all are fine...
just don't buy products from any non reputed sites go with sites like flipkart.com

 

[whitestar_999]

^^did you not read my post completely?price wise you can get hdd cheaper in major markets & i will never trust handling of as delicate an item as hdd through online shipping.if hdd wasn't a delicate item i would not recommend against online buying.why take chance if you can go directly to major market?i know flipkart packaging is good but what about before.flipkart too gets hdd from some place else so what about condition of shipping there.more the intermediaries between source & customer more are the chances of handling damages.also these damages may not be apparent immediately but can show in long run after few months or even year.

 

[akky89]

^^did you not read my post completely?price wise you can get hdd cheaper in major markets & i will never trust handling of as delicate an item as hdd through online shipping.if hdd wasn't a delicate item i would not recommend against online buying.why take chance if you can go directly to major market?i know flipkart packaging is good but what about before.flipkart too gets hdd from some place else so what about condition of shipping there.more the intermediaries between source & customer more are the chances of handling damages.also these damages may not be apparent immediately but can show in long run after few months or even year.

dude think it again... if flipkart is getting these devices from somewhere so does the dealers in the market...
and i purchased an external hdd last year when price where low
the WD 1TB external hdd was priced at 3.2K at nehru place but found it @ 3K at letsbuy.com and also used a coupon ...
after which it cost me 2.6K which is quite less then nehru place...
so i'm saying all of the above with my personal experience...
same happened when i brought seagate 500GB 2.5" external hdd almost 4 years back...

 

[d6bmg]

@OP: Your system have only IDE port and lacks SATA port. All the HDDs you are talking about are SATA HDDs. So, you can't add the HDDs unless you are going to use a PATA to SATA converter ot a PCI to SATA adapter.

 

[akky89]

@OP: Your system have only IDE port and lacks SATA port. All the HDDs you are talking about are SATA HDDs. So, you can't add the HDDs unless you are going to use a PATA to SATA converter ot a PCI to SATA adapter.

+1 to that ... totally forgot about that...

 

[whitestar_999]

not necessarily true.my asrock 865 mobo had 2 sata I ports.

@akky89,in my experience almost all seagate hard disks in north india at least are sourced from fortune marketing in nehru place.they are the main distributor of seagate there.what i think is all consignments from seagate comes directly to them & then distributed from their place in nehru place.now this much i know that hdd's shipped from factories to distributors are shipped with best possible protection.so if yo are buying in nehru place you are only including two steps:
(i)seagate--->distributor,nehru place(best possible safety if you decide to buy from them though at a bit higher price since you are not making bulk purchase)
(ii)distributor,nehru place--->other shop,nehru place(if you decide to buy from that shop)(involves a 15min trip of a guy from distributor to shop on foot so again very safe).

now including online stores introduces additional steps like first shipping of batch from distributor to online stores warehouse & from that warehouse to courier shipping & finally involves journey to customer house.of course it can still be safe but like i said before more steps means more chances(not surely) of improper handling.so if a person can afford a trip to major pc market like nehru place even if the price is a little bit more i suggest to do it.of course if the price difference is high or you can not afford a trip then obviously you don't have a choice anyway except buying online.

 

[akky89]

not necessarily true.my asrock 865 mobo had 2 sata I ports.

@akky89,in my experience almost all seagate hard disks in north india at least are sourced from fortune marketing in nehru place.they are the main distributor of seagate there.what i think is all consignments from seagate comes directly to them & then distributed from their place in nehru place.now this much i know that hdd's shipped from factories to distributors are shipped with best possible protection.so if yo are buying in nehru place you are only including two steps:
(i)seagate--->distributor,nehru place(best possible safety if you decide to buy from them though at a bit higher price since you are not making bulk purchase)
(ii)distributor,nehru place--->other shop,nehru place(if you decide to buy from that shop)(involves a 15min trip of a guy from distributor to shop on foot so again very safe).

now including online stores introduces additional steps like first shipping of batch from distributor to online stores warehouse & from that warehouse to courier shipping & finally involves journey to customer house.of course it can still be safe but like i said before more steps means more chances(not surely) of improper handling.so if a person can afford a trip to major pc market like nehru place even if the price is a little bit more i suggest to do it.of course if the price difference is high or you can not afford a trip then obviously you don't have a choice anyway except buying online.

well now i'm getting your point...
but i never saw any problem of that kind... but it doesn't mean that they could not happen...
i guess its only luck...
if its bad enough you can always have DOA.

 

[whitestar_999]

that's what i say to people buying hard disks.LUCK is the most important factor when it comes to hdd.also i much prefer DOA hard disk than the one which die after few months.better to lose hdd with no data than when it has data.

 

[Naxal]

I kind a agree about price model of local market, recently I ran a thread in forum about a PC config and online price came around 87.5k, plus some shipping charges for display / cabinet or the UPS or the spk.. How ever the entire system came at 79.5k from local market !!

 

[akky89]

that's what i say to people buying hard disks.LUCK is the most important factor when it comes to hdd.also i much prefer DOA hard disk than the one which die after few months.better to lose hdd with no data than when it has data.

+1 better have DOA then loose data...