Internal Hard Drive Replacement Question

[needhelpreallybad08]

I recently posted on here and have discovered my hard drive is going out and I need to replace it.

My current hard drive is a 250GB Serial ATA 16MB buffer.

I'm looking into purchasing the Seagate 1TB Serial ATA/300 32MB Buffer (http://shop3.outpost.com/product/5478279?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG) as the replacement.

Will a 1TB likely physically fit inside my tower? How can I judge?

Does it matter that the buffer size is double?  Can XP handle the larger buffer size no problem?

Let me know what you guys think.  Thanks!!

[Aegis]

Will your physical computer / motherboard handle it?

[needhelpreallybad08]

Will your physical computer / motherboard handle it?

I have no idea...  The motherboard's bus speed is 800 MHz and it has a 3.4 GHz Intel Pentium 4 processor.

Should I stick with a 750GB 16MB Buffer instead?  Is even 750GB too much??

[Deerpark]

Will a 1TB likely physically fit inside my tower? How can I judge?

The new drive have the same 3.5" form factor as most other internal hard drives. (Unless we're talking laptops where the hdds are actually smaller.)

Does it matter that the buffer size is double?  Can XP handle the larger buffer size no problem?

Shouldn't be a problem.

What matters here is whether or not your motherboard supports SATA II. If not you will not get the full performance the drive offers but it should still work.

[needhelpreallybad08]

Does it matter that the buffer size is double?  Can XP handle the larger buffer size no problem?

Shouldn't be a problem.

What matters here is whether or not your motherboard supports SATA II. If not you will not get the full performance the drive offers but it should still work.

By "SATA II" I assume you mean SATA 3.0 Gbit/s (versus SATA 1.5 Gbit/s)...?  My computer is over 4 years old, so I don't know which my motherboard supports.  Are the connectors the same?  Will there be any issues using a newer hard drive on an old motherboard?

Wiki reports: "SATA is designed to be backward and forward compatible with future revisions of the SATA standard.  According to the hard drive manufacturer Maxtor, motherboard host controllers using the VIA and SIS chipsets VT8237, VT8237R, VT6420, VT6421L, SIS760, SIS964 found on the ECS 755-A2 which was manufactured in 2003, do not support SATA 3Gb/s drives. To address interoperability problems, the largest hard drive manufacturer Seagate/Maxtor have added a user-accessible jumper-switch known as the Force 150, to switch between 150 MB/s and 300 MB/s operation. Users with a SATA 1.5Gb/s motherboard with one of the listed chipsets should either buy an ordinary SATA 1.5Gb/s hard disk, buy a SATA 3Gb/s hard disk with the user-accessible jumper, or buy a PCI or PCI-E card to add full SATA 3Gb/s capability and compatibility. Western Digital uses jumper setting called "OPT1 Enabled" to force 150 MB/s data transfer speed."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA

[patio]

The connections are the same...the drive will operate at whatever the MBoard supports. A SATA 2 or 3 HDD will operate at SATA1 speed if that's how the MBoard was designed.

[needhelpreallybad08]

The connections are the same...the drive will operate at whatever the MBoard supports. A SATA 2 or 3 HDD will operate at SATA1 speed if that's how the MBoard was designed.

Cool, thanks so much!  What year were "SATA II" (SATA 3.0 Gbits/SATA 300) motherboards/HDDs largely implemented into the mass market of home desktop computers?

Deerpark stated the buffer size increase (16MB ---> 32MB) shouldn't matter.  Will I notice a difference in operation?

[Deerpark]

The buffer is used to store and rapidly retrieve frequently accessed data, so with a larger buffer more data can be stored.
Whether or not you'll notice a difference between a 16 and 32 MB buffer is hard to say.
It should lead to increased performance in certain situations.