darkscorp
02-13-2008, 07:54 PM
trying to help out my brother by partially rebuilding his system. near as i can tell, he seems to have managed to limp along on an amazingly bad hard drive with at times (literally) seek times around 10 minutes. this is probably due to the fact that the thing sounds like it has a handful of gravel in it. anyway, he's survived with that long enough to to burn out his optical drive, AND get more virus/adware/malware problems than any one person should be allowed. which means it's time for HD / optical drive replacement with a fresh install. (remember kids, don't buy OEM software unless you're POSITIVE it's what you want, or it'll set on your desk until your stupid brother says he thinks he threw away his restore disk and you have to give it to him out of guilt). anyway... pretty much set on :
Western Digital Caviar SE WD1600AAJS 160GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136075)
but have some questions about an optical drive. he actually has 2, one is stone dead, but he has a "good" one that will occasionally work, but i'm a real stickler for, you know, having at least one optical drive that pretty much works ALL the time. he currently has the 2 in there on IDE.
should i:
1. just replace the stone dead one with a new ide?
2. replace the dead one with a SATA? and if so, will it play nice with there also being an IDE drive installed?
3. or should i just completely unhook both drives. and replace the dead one with a decent SATA and be done with it? let him keep that dead drive in front just to keep dust out.
also, i should ask i guess, I assume he has an open SATA connection on his MOBO, but it's purple, not orange, is this something else? which would mean i'd be back to the IDE option...
anyway, sorry for being so long winded, any advice would be greatly appreciated though.
Western Digital Caviar SE WD1600AAJS 160GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136075)
but have some questions about an optical drive. he actually has 2, one is stone dead, but he has a "good" one that will occasionally work, but i'm a real stickler for, you know, having at least one optical drive that pretty much works ALL the time. he currently has the 2 in there on IDE.
should i:
1. just replace the stone dead one with a new ide?
2. replace the dead one with a SATA? and if so, will it play nice with there also being an IDE drive installed?
3. or should i just completely unhook both drives. and replace the dead one with a decent SATA and be done with it? let him keep that dead drive in front just to keep dust out.
also, i should ask i guess, I assume he has an open SATA connection on his MOBO, but it's purple, not orange, is this something else? which would mean i'd be back to the IDE option...
anyway, sorry for being so long winded, any advice would be greatly appreciated though.