My local Office Max is going out of business and they have all of their HDD's discounted 20%.  They have Western Digital 7200RPM and Seagate.  I like the 5 year Seagate warranty, but they are all Ultra ATA/100 drives.

Short of opening my box, how do I find out if my computer will handle one of the Seagate drives?

Are the Western Digital drives any good?  They only have a 1 year warranty.  I need something to back up the contents of my current HDD.

I prefer Seagate to WD, though both are fine.

Even if your computer can't take full advantage of ATA/100 drives, the faster spindle speeds and access times will make your computer seem faster.  Go into Windows Device Manager and double-click your disk drive controller tree.  Depending on whose ATA controller hardware your motherboard uses, it may tell you what DMA/PIO transfer speed that your current drive is operating at.  It's a good bet that that's your maximum capabilities.

For the right price on a new drive, you really can't go wrong.

ETA, my device manager expanded tree for the NForce ATA controller:

Here's what I got.



So the Ultra ATA/100 uses the same type of connection that any drive uses?  Ribbon type cables with tons of connections?

If that is the case, then I guess going with the Seagate Ultra ATA/100 drive would be a better deal.  Plus that 5 year warranty looks might damn nice.

all modern computers use 80 wire hardrive connection(ATA) till you go to the SATA connection.  

either drive will work with your gateway computer.  I would buy the seagate.  I resell seagate harddrives.  Can't beat them, especially the warranty.  

you usually don't see the ata 133 unless you have a higher end board.  server board per example.  

Thanks for the answers.  Going with the Seagate 160 GB.

I'd vote for WD drives. All I use in my personal systems. 1480 gigs across 3 machines :)

-d

Quoted: I'd vote for WD drives. All I use in my personal systems. 1480 gigs across 3 machines :) -d

too late  hahaha  

I swear by Seagate drives. They aren't speed demons, but they are quiet and I've never had one fail. In my next PC I plan to use a 150gb Western Digital Raptor 10k RPM drive for the operating system disc and two or three very large Seagate 7200 RPM drives for data storage.

Galland

OK, so I got the drive (160 GB Seagate, $80).  Installation as easy as opening the thing up, dropping in the drive, connection the cables, and firing it up?

Or do I need to set a jumper?  I assume these things are like CD drives in that one functions as the master and the other as the slave.  I want this new drive to be secondary to my current 80 GB drive.

Also, what is the best way to back-up the contents of my old drive onto the new drive?  Just CTRL-C, CTRL-V?

I read an interesting article in the tech section of my local paper a few weeks ago about automatic BU's using two drives.  Not online anymore, so I can't go back and read it.

Quoted: OK, so I got the drive (160 GB Seagate, $80).  Installation as easy as opening the thing up, dropping in the drive, connection the cables, and firing it up? Or do I need to set a jumper?  I assume these things are like CD drives in that one functions as the master and the other as the slave.  I want this new drive to be secondary to my current 80 GB drive. Also, what is the best way to back-up the contents of my old drive onto the new drive?  Just CTRL-C, CTRL-V? I read an interesting article in the tech section of my local paper a few weeks ago about automatic BU's using two drives.  Not online anymore, so I can't go back and read it.

yep.


so you will want to setup the new drive as slave, as you already said.  

i copy and paste my data to a secondary drive also.  someone else might be able to recomend some software to make it easier.