If you use 2 p-ATA on the same flat cable you have to define which one is master and which one is slave. If you install them in 2 separate flat cables they should both be master ( considering that both are alone in that cable). With SATA drives each drive has its own cable so you don't have jumpers to set them apart.
Advice. Go with an SSD drive, its the best upgrade you can make on any PC.
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Buying a new harddrive/SSD isn't something we can really afford at the moment, but something we'll do in the future for sure.
Ok, so now I understand how the two old drives need to be set up depending on the cable, but does that change at all with the new SATA drive? She wants that to be her main drive. So do the same rules apply to the old ones? Wouldn't putting them on master conflict with the new SATA drive being the main one?
Thanks for your answer!
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No, Master/Slave ONLY has an effect on the exact cable the drive are on.
Back in the day most computers came with 2 IDE Ports on the mobo. That meant up to 4 drives (normally 1-2 HDD's and 1-2 CD/DVD's), each one of those cables would have a master, and if there was a second device connected to that same cable, it would be the Slave.
It was very common for the HDD to be on one cable as Master, and the CD/DVD drive to be on the second cable as Master. Thus keeping both devices separate (for performance, and ease of cable management).
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Now that you mention it, I think I had a brief discussion about this back in high-school, but it was already dead by then so we didn't learn about it. Just goes to show how outdated her system is. I guess it's time to upgrade it fully
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SATA HDD always connect to main board directly without any other devices at link. One of type jumpers - decrease data transfer speed.
About connecting old HDD's maybe you read this infos - http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=1778&page=2
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I think the storage capacity of what the old HDDs will add is negligible to the storage capacity of modern HDDs and therefore can better removed from her system. Make sure you have a SATA connector on her motherboard before buying a new HDD.
When you keep them you do not have to change the jumpers as explained by JayOnSpeed.
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Slave/Primary has no effect on SATA Drives. Old Drives still had the jumpers but they didn't actually do anything (it was just there cause there were still making IDE versions too).
As such as long as you are hooking it up as SATA, you can ignore them.
That said, drives that old, I'd probably just copy the data onto the/a new drive and toss em. They will be well past their use by date.
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I wasn't talking about putting jumpers on the new Drive, just the existing old ones.
I haven't managed to take a look in her PC yet, so I'm not exactly sure how these old harddrives work. Are you saying it's possible to jump remove the jumpers and connect the old harddrives via SATA cable?
Replacing those drives isn't really an option now, although of course it would be better.
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If they are SATA drives then yes, just ignore the jumpers (or look, sometimes they had a "SATA" setting), and plug it in.
Now if they are pure IDE HDD's, then you need the jumbers, and would set them up as normal.
But if they are IDE Drives then I really once again suggest just moving the stuff over to the new HDD, or getting a second "storage" hdd. You really can't rely on an IDE drive anymore, they are so old.
Also, few modern Mobo's even support IDE anymore. It's dead tech.
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Yea, my motherboard has no slots to accept her old HDDs, so I've decided to grab new ones, as you suggested. Thank you for the advice :) Helpful as always!
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Just as an alternative... if you're tight on cash there are inexpensive adapters on ebay and amazon which are to be fitted on an IDE drive and adapt it to sata. Around 3-4$ per piece.
Something alike that: http://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B008MU7UIA?keywords=sata%20ide%20adapter&qid=1456760565&ref_=sr_1_9&sr=8-9
IMHO there is nothing wrong with IDE vs SATA mech. drives even the speed gains should be negligible except that IDE drives are of low volume production as of now and your drives are likely old and should be considered for a replacment.
If you're looking for a decent magnetic drive consider the Hitachi made ACA300's or 400's. 3 respectively 4TB on a single drive for around 90 to 120$. A host of a few 128GB partitions for OS and OS-Backup (i recommend 3 such partitions) and a good spare for whatever library you might need to host. But if you got the money... add a decent SSD on top of that. 128GB SSDs are the slowest of the pack so i'd strongly suggest a 256GB one.
120$ + another 100$ if you want a serious upgrade of your disk subsystem =)
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Yea, I really need to save money so I've decided to stick with the smallest SSDs possible. I'm between these two currently:
http://bionic.com.cy/products/sp-s55-120gb-2-5-sataiii-ssd
http://bionic.com.cy/products/sandisk-x300-128gb-2-5-sataiii-ssd
I've looked around and find mixed reviews for both, most likely because they're relatively cheap, but for the most part both seem to have high ratings. I don't have any experience with SSDs, and don't know if you do, but any advice you have on those 2 brands would be super useful :)
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I don't care much about the brands. I'm mostly interested in the tech params. For SSDs that would be the type of the nand flash that the ssd uses. It likely is 19 (ok) to 16nm (borderline ok) and the controller that the manufacturer used.
Btw those prices are much inline to what i have in mind here in germany too.
If you add up the costs of your 128GB SSD (60€) and add a 1TB HDD (65€) like: http://bionic.com.cy/products/1tb-hitachi-gst-deskstar-e7k1000-hard-disk both add upto 125€ (excl. shipping). Very much to pricing ranges of a acceptable 3-4TB drive:
http://geizhals.eu/?cat=hde7s&sort=r&xf=958_3000#xf_top
You have to to tradeoff your need for space and speed. But running out of space is more severe than running low on speed. And those drives aren't slow. Not a bit.
You might grab a 3TB drive for around 80€ and a 32GB SSD for 30€ ( like http://geizhals.eu/silicon-power-slim-s55-32gb-sp032gbss3s55s25-a1256687.html?hloc=at&hloc=de&hloc=pl&hloc=uk&hloc=eu ) both exkl. shipping.Thats 110€ (less than your build) and much more space and offering similiar speeds while still enough to run a slim windows partition (you should move your profile to the mechanical drive in that case). I was running a Win7 on a superslim OS share and it used about 17GB there. A few tweaks and you're good to go. Actually thinking about getting myselves one of those inexpensive SSDs now :)
Just as a reprise: 3032GB versus 1128GB total storage for even 10€ less while offering near same levels of comfort and higher speeds on the hdd side. But its your choice ;)
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Her old drives are IDE drives, which is why I was asking :)
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Ah. In that case, get an IDE to SATA converter and set the jumpers to master. SATA does not have slave, only master mode. The other possibility is to get a PCIE IDE expansion card and use a simple one master - one slave configuration.
Or, better, get a simple IDE/SATA to USB kit, buy a SATA3 hard drive, copy the contents from the old ones there, and throw that two dinosaurs out.
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Wow, that sounds like it would not be worth the hassle. I'm going to take your advice, and make those dinosaurs go extinct :)
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Ah that's a good question. Well I'm going to be installer her old harddrives into my PC, and giving her the entire build. So I know that my current PC can run modern Drives, but unsure about how to check if it is compatible with old drives that need jumpers.
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I looked up images, and turns out that my motherboard would not be compatible with her hard drives, so I have no choice but to buy new HDDs anyway. Probably for the best. Thanks for the response!
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I am going to put in all my votes for making the new system drive an SSD. It makes such an incredible difference.
And I agree with others, if you are going to do an SATA storage drive, probably just copy everything from the old drives and remove them.
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Just check out the interface cables. If all the HDD are SATA, they should get to work no mater what.
On the other hand, if they are IDE (wow, how ancient are we talking here?) there's a strong possibility that a new(ish) MB will not support them.
The difference, you ask? check the cables. If they're wide and flat, plus if the HDDrive is connected via a 4-pin power connector, you're most probably out of luck and will need either an IDE->SATA connector or some such. And please, have mercy and dispose of these saurian-tech products.
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Haha, love the last sentence. Thank you for the informative comment. I don't believe her new Motherboard accepts IDE, so we've decided to go with brand new harddrives, as most people have recommended.
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I think you should just back-up everything she needs and then throw those old HDD's away. Get her a 1-2 TB SATA HDD and let her use only that. I think that's plenty of space, I doubt she'd need more. Some people said you should get her an SSD instead and I agree only if you don't mind spending more money since SSD of X capacity is always more expensive than SATA of the same capacity. Of course SSD loads everything faster so it's more convenient.
If your girlfriend doesn't use a lot of space you might as well get her an SSD. But if she needs more space than go with SATA.
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That's exactly what we decided to do in the end. One small 120GB SSD for Windows OS and maybe one program we use a lot, and 1TB Harddrive for her storage :)
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120 GB is enough for a lot of programs. Win 8.x/10 needs like 10-15 GB tops. 64 GB is not advised only because Windows tends to get bloated over 35 GB after a long while, and the system needs some free space to work normally.
Edit: Oh, and look into the 120 GB Kingston SSD. Relatively cheap price and has over 350 MB/s read/write. Of course a Samsung 850 EVO would be the best performance/price wise, but Kingston and ADATA has some really fast budget solutions.
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Because Cyprus technology prices are INSANELY pricey. I mean, it's 170 Euros for Windows 7 :P
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I actually was trying to explain that imho SSD are pure luxury and raw hdd space is unskippable. A single modern 3/4TB with 7200RPM is still very fast which makes SSDs an afterthought before anything else. And i rarely need to bootup my computers anymore thanks to generous usage of standby which i abuse to the max so speed gains through faster boot times is negligible. I have to admit that windows is a tad slower on disk operations that linux is. I might not be affected as much as pure windows users. The only place where i generally recommend swapping to an SSD blindly are notebooks which don't have much space to begin with (2,5'' space limitiation) and do benefit a good amount from having pure electronic storage.
Well about that Win7... what should i say... i'd say i know just zero persons what bought a official retail Win7 license. But then i remembered exactly one ;))
(who again would shell out that much money if a used OEM licencse is about 20€ on ebay which do probably ship to Cyprus too ;)
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And shipping costs are very expensive too. Whether I buy hardware here or have it shipped, it's usually about 100€ more than most European countries.
Thanks for all the help you've given me :)
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Everything has been written already, more or less.
You really need to get a new HDD.
Copy the old data onto a new one and keep the old ones as backup. Those old ones will eventually fail.
However, it's also possible that they keep on working and the new one dies soon :D
If your motherboard doesn't accept PATA drives you'll have to borrow or buy a usb-HDD adapter and copy the files over via USB.
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Little piece of advice, I would really consider getting a new harddrive and selling those 2 old drives for that sake of data safety. Even if you have to get a small drive it's better than keeping old drives.
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Since this community has proved to be incredibly helpful with some of the more complicated tech difficulties I've had, even more so than hardware forums, I've decided to bring (hopefully) my final problem with my new PC build.
I'm helping my girlfriend upgrade her PC, but turns out her two existing harddrives are ancient. They have jumpers on them.
I also plan on buying her a new harddrive to install Windows on and make it her main one. So I'm assuming it's going to just be a modern SATA harddrive.
I was wondering how exactly I should set this up.
Should I just install the new harddrive normally, and then plug in the two old harddrives and put them on the "slave" position? As in, take the jumpers off completely?
Thanks!
As usual, here's a thank you giveaway
EDIT: Thank you all for the help. I've learned quite a bit. We've decided to buy her a new HDD, move all the data onto that, and a separate small SSD for Windows. Most of you suggested it, and I think you're probably right about getting rid of such old hardware. It will probably just cause problems in the future.
Thanks again!
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