thinking of a new hard drive, help needed
 

I.m thinking of getting a second harddrive but I'm a tad confused about the type i should use.

what with ata and udma i'm not sure which i should get. should i see what the first drive is and get the same type or does it not matter and the pc will recognise it anyway?

I'm away from my pc at the mo so couldn't tell you what type it is, but any help/suggestions would be welcome.

first step would be to find out what types of hdd your mother board supports and what hard disk is installed already. i doubt you could go wrong with a maxtor or western digital one though. get an ATA/133 and 8mb cache and 7200rpm and it *should* work in your pc. i have an ata133 hdd in my machine that only supports ata100 and its perfectly fine. they seem to be backwards compatible but im not up to spec on hard disks.

sisoft sandra should help you... has a welath of diagnostics in it ;)

hard drives on the ata standard are backwards and forwards compatible. as in 133 drives work in 66 boards and 66 drives work in 133 boards (same with 100 stuff)
Things to watch out for is size, if you have under 8.4G be sure to check your board supports more than that.

Also there is a 137GB limit as well check if you can take that (most can't properly).

The other thing you'll have to look out for is serial ata, you should know if you have it or not most likely not unless your board is less than 6 months ish old.

Just be aware that they exist and make sure you get a p-ata / udma drive.

hth
K