[Chantelle]

No I Do not think you have SATA I think you have PATA or known as E-IDE... As before mentioned you can tell by the ribbons that go in the back... If its SATA you dont need to differentiate between master/slave anyway since they all run on their own channels.

Personally Its faster to set up everthing on your new hard drive than on your old hard drive (system anyway).

But if you are going to keep it

set it up as follows

IDE 0

New hard drive with system installed

IDE 1

CD - ROM master
and If your going to use it Old hard drive Slave

Its better to seperate hard drives over seperate channels, you will get a better performance then do what blade said and set your page file to the second hard drive...

once your up and running we can explain that.

As for what drive to get , get what you wish... I personally do not recommend western digital I found them extremeley unreliable I must have had at least 5 die on me.. but thats perhaps just bad luck as tricky said he foudn them to be okay so...

Also If you knwo your processor (you can typically find this out by simply right clicking on your my computer and going properties it shoudl say on the first dialogue box).. taht will likeley determine what RAM speed is used.

[Tricky]

If you don't go Western Digital, I'd recommend Maxtor. I have two Maxtor's in my machine right now, and I've had one for about two years now. I've heard that Maxtors tend to die after a few months, but I personally have never had that problem. I've put WD's in almost every computer I've built, and no one has come to me saying their drive failed, so maybe I'm just a very lucky guy. You're basically taking a gamble with any computer part when you buy it. Some will die, some won't. You're more than likely to get a good piece than a bad, though.

As far as RAM goes, I'm guessing your processor handles PC3200, but I don't know for sure. I'd recommend getting that anyway. If it's PC2700, you won't notice any difference, if any at all, and if you ever plan to get a future upgrade to your machine, you'll at least have some decent RAM left over (not that PC2700 is paticularly bad).

The difference between a SATA cable and an IDE is tremendous, so you should be able to tell the difference. As Chan said, it's a ribbon cable for IDE. If that's unclear, it's usually a light gray color, as well as long and flat. It looks sorta like a giant tape worm. I tend to buy wrapped IDE cables, which are basically the same thing but the ribbon is bound in a tube of rubber, but I have yet to see a commercial brand use them (unless it's maybe Alienware). If for some strange reason they have done this, it's usually still a lot thicker than a SATA cable and you can tell by the plug into the mobo and the HDD. It's wide and shortm almost like a small Playstation controller plugin. SATA cables, on the other hand, are very thin and space saving, you might not even see them at first if it's dark in your case. More often than not, motherboards will have both IDE and SATA ports, so even if you guess wrong on IDE, you can still use the HDD if you don't want to return it and get a new one (which I recommend you do). It's pretty easy to check, so just do it now. Pop off your side panel -- I'd shut off your computer, first, just so you don't accidently fall and stab your finger into the heatsink or something unfortunate like that -- and see if there is a long gray ribbon cable.

If you reformat your old drive, you can completely wipe every off of it; viruses, old games, whatever... There's no point in discarding it, other than lack of room in your computer.

[Chantelle]

Sata cable



IDE cable

that might help

I also concur about the drives its gonna be a personal expereince. I woudl too agree however Maxtors tend to be good from my expereince though.. Just go with teh WD im sure it will be fine.

[Squall]

well id say ti would be personal exspierience really ive had my maxtor 60GB for 4 years now hasnt died once or failed me

[Melissa]

chans sata cable didnt come up loool



heres the sata cable