Need help trying to understand HardDrive Stuff

[NEED WOW NOW]

Well i am trying to look for a good Hard drive but i am weak in this area so can u guys plz explain wat the following are
SATA
PATA
IDE
RAID
THE difference between OEM and Retail
And other hard drive info
Also i am looking for a HD for this Mobo that is compatible and is cheap and about 200Gb through 250Gb
And also thanks ahead of time

 

[Celegorm]

SATA is a newer technology of hard drives which is faster than the older IDE/PATA (they are the same thing) drives. Sata drives use a slim cable (not a big ribbon cable like the PATA drives), and a different power cord and are generally faster than PATA drives. Unlike the PATA drives, you do not need to set a master/slave jumper on SATA drives.

RAID is kinda harder to explain. Basically it can be three things. The combining of two drives so OSes see them as one large drive for speed purposes, having a hardware controller mirror one drive onto another every time something is written or deleted for backup purposes, or a combination of the above.

Really the only noticeable difference between OEM and retail hard drives is weather or not it comes with a CD for formatting and all that fun stuff. However, in all reality, there is no need for said CD since you can easily format the drive in windows.

 

[muz]

read this for raid http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID cos there are many different types of raid
and you can get rounded cables for ide that help airflow a lot

 

[Rudster8161]

Sata is a faster and more efficent way to comminacate with the motherboard

Pata and IDE are the same thing. this is the old way to connecect HDD's to motherboards

RAID is a way to make lets say 3 250gig HDD's act like 1 750gig HDD

OEM comes with nothing expect the HDD while retail comes with cables and a manual. might be other stuff too.


Get a SATA HDD dosent matter which one really. perferably has 16MB cache. retail or OEM dosent really matter. the motherboard will come with a cable. PATA HDD's are the same price maybe a dollar or 2 cheaper but nothing major

 

[NEED WOW NOW]

sooo then i would need a SATA hard drive if im going to get this PSU
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817182076
And i fer got to add "How dose partitioning work and wat is its main use?"

 

[Rudster8161]

partioning is used to make one phyical HDD look like 2 or 3 or even much more "logical HDD"

 

[D-Lew]

Partitioning is a way to make "2" or more hard drives from one physical drive. Basically if you want 2 operating systems on one hard drive you could partition it so you have 2 virtual drives instead of just one physical. It could also be used for organization purposes, i.e. Windows and important apps in one drive, junk in the other. I'm not sure if partitioning a huge drive into smaller sections helps seek times, someone else answer that because that's one thing my dad always insisted, I didn't see how that was possible. I know it will make searching for files easier as long as you know which drive it is in.

 

[Celegorm]

You don't need to get a SATA just because of that PSU. Normal IDE drives just use the 4-pin molex connectors.

How partitioning works, idk. It's main use is really to separate one physical hard drive into multiple virtual hard dives. I think the biggest use of partitioning is to dual-boot since both operating systems need their own hard drive. Another common use of partitioning is to separate data like music and pictures from everything else on the hard drive, so if for some reason you need to re-install windows, you do not loose all of your data.

 

[NEED WOW NOW]

well i have a computer with a 40Gb Hard drive right now and when i get my new computer i will b getting a 250Gb hard drive so i want to use the 40Gb for like OS ,Security programs ,and all my other important stuff and then therefor games and goodies on the BIGGER one
And if that isn't possible that stinks. And the Mobo comes with the SATA connectors so i have no real need of a retail HD right