[SOLVED] Getting new hard drive/installing new OS?

Friday, I'm receiving my new Samsung Spinpoint F3 HD103SJ (1TB, 7200 RPM, SATA 3.0Gb/s) from Newegg. Hopefully, it'll turn out better than the Caviar Black (750GB, 7200RPM) that I recently purchased, which is noisy & hot, I'm going to get a RMA# for it as soon as my new drive is in place.

My issue is this, I have good backups made through Acronis True Image, as well as Macrium Reflect. I'm going to format the drive using the latest version of Easeus Partition Manager (Master 6.1.1 Professional Edition).

For the time being, I'm going to run the drive the way it's already setup, only I'll spread out my partitions a lot. There's a huge difference between 320GB & 1TB, the new standard for hard drives. I may even create a couple of extra logical partitions for storage.

What I'd like to know is, I've seen a Rosewill hard drive box on Newegg, it looks as though it will hold at least 3 drives, and doesn't cost that much. I have a SATA extension cord, which I can simply plug to whatever drive I wish to run. I couldn't see a clear picture of how this box plugs in. Does anyone knows if my SATA extension cable will work with this box?

The reason I ask is this, I would like to take the Caviar Black (once I get it back), create a 300GB backup partition on it, then install Vista SP2, followed by a couple of Linux versions. This drive was not cheap, and I don't intend to waste it. I was going to run the 2008 Server that is available for download on TechNet, but I don't know anything about it, how it works, or how to even use it.

As for the OEM installed drive that I still have in here, I intend to leave it "as is", just in case at some point, I may need it one day.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Cat

Can you post a link to that Rosewill box? I didn't see a box that could hold 3. I think much of my advice will be dependent on that product's specs.

I don't see a 3 bay Rosewill JBOD box either. Nor did I see one with external SATA connections.

If I think what you're doing is correct then a Sans Digital enclosure is the way to go.

This is what I use: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16816111036

Mine left California today, I hope to have it by Friday as well.

Most multiple bay external cases would likely have a single connection (or one usb & one esata which cannot be used simultaneously) and would not provide for you to simply plug directly into whichever drive you want at the time. They utilize a Port Multiplier feature, this feature is fully supported via USB to allow multiple drives on a single chain but for an esata connection it is dependant on your motherboard or the pci-card as to whether it is supported, unfortunately for me, my MB does not and so to use my dual blacx I must eject drive 1 to see drive 2 (or use usb which is up to 6 times slower).

When you run CheckDisk on the 1.0 tb. hard drive expect it to take at least 3 hours. I've got a Western Digital Caviar Black 1.0 tb. hard drive. It takes 3 hours for CheckDisk to run on it. This drive is not at all loud at all. I can't really hear it at all. My hearing is fine. Just had it check a month ago.i

Sometimes hard drives are just bad out of the factory. That's the nature of products which are made by man, a certain percentage are bound to have problems, fail, etc.

As the bumper sticker so eloquently states: SH** HAPPENS!

I am not sure how it is these days, but years ago there were basically four grades or levels of electronics:
Consumer
Commercial
Military
Aerospace

These days I am sure it's different in some aspects, such as my main hard drive is a Samsung Enterprise-Class drive, that means it's more reliable and used a lot in server setups.



So Cat's drive just may be the proverbial "lemon". I for one have had very good luck with hard drives, some people don't ever have an issue.

If one of today's modern hard drive starts making noises and warmer than usual out of the box, then something is definitely wrong with the unit.

TrainableMan, we got lucky! They (Newegg) ran out of these drives on the last day of the sale (Monday). I ordered mine late Saturday night. As I said, I tried to resist buying the drive, but never had a 1TB one before, but the bottom line was, it had a great rating & reviews, a killer price, I just had to have it.

Now, I just need to figure out how I want to install it.

Cat

Here it is, but I misread the article, it only holds two drives, but I don't think I'll benefit from it after all.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817182144

Cat

What I really need is a way to create a eSATA connection. C_C showed me one, I must have lost the bookmark between reinstalls. It was a device that attached to your SATA connection (the same one that your drive plugs into). With that part, you can run up to 5 eSATA devices from it, with a minimal "bottleneck" effect. After all, I'd only run one drive a time.

I'm not in a hurry, before you know it, Christmas will be here, and there's things that I'd like to do for my wife. She comes before the computer does, and Christmas is only three and a half months away.

Cat

Yeah, the JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Discs) feature is for combining the capacity of the 2 drives and they appear as 1. It's like the most simplistic type of RAID set up.

When you get the drive, we'll get you set up.