hi all im a newbie looking at doing my first build but struggling with some of the terminology what does sata,raid,raid array,scsi mean,how do these affect performance cheers
SATA & ATA are the only drives that you want to look at for your machine. (if you want to find out more about any of them Google "define:<term>") It is more than likely that the motherboard you choose will support SATA drives (they are significantly faster than ATA drives), so they should be your first choice i tend to use Micro Direct Ltd for parts (never had ANY problems with them, and i have ordered at least £1000 worth of hardware from them over a few years). what have you chosen so far? Impy [OT] PS the link to microdirect is a referrer link, hardwareforums will receive a percentage of your order (but it wont cost you anything extra), also, I am NOT suggesting microdirect because of this... i was using them for quite awhile before the scheme started [/OT]
cheers for the quick reply nothing as yet until i have understood everything i need to know,i have a pc which i will be recycling a few parts from including the hard drive are all connections generic or do i have to find a compatible one for the motherboard
I would say that any motherboard you come accross will have support ATA, newer mother boards will also have SATA. just put ATA or SATA into google images too see what they look like (so you can work out what the motherboard has)
that depends, approximatly how old is the system you will be recycling ? RAID = Redundant Array of (Inexpensive or Independent) Disks SCSI = Small Computer Systems Interface (pronounced Scuzzy) and SCSI is expensive and so it is mostly used in businesses (due to the expense) SATA 2 has the best HDD performance (excluding SCSI & RAID) BTW: check this you will just overwhelm yourself if you try to learn "everything" because you will never learn "everythin about computers, as it is constantly changing BTW: just do as Impy stated and stick to SATA & (P)ATA
funny you should mention overwhelming however with yours and the forums input things are becoming clearer,one more question,have been looking at different hard drives two names that keep coming up are seagate and western digital,which one is the best and any input on the following hard drive "seagate barracuda 7200.10 250gb sata hard drive cheers
well everyone has their own opinion on which HDD manufacturer is best, here mine, personally i will only let myself buy Seagate drives because they are more reliable and they don't mind replacing damaged drives (always important) but with Seagate taking over Maxtor last year and rebadging their own drives and selling them as Maxtor drives so i can now buy Seagate & Maxtor drives but some people prefer WD, Samsung also has fans, like i said everyone has their own opinion Edit: why ?
why you ask selecting all the components for your first build is a mine field to a newbie,however things are rapidly becoming clearer cheers
stay at HWF and a lot of thinks will become clear, i've only being @ HWF just over a year, and i've learn so much it sometimes scares me[ot]i thought i knew a lot before i came hear however i realized that i didn't have a clue[/ot]i'm still always learning np, glad to help
