I just got some new computer parts for Christmas, and I built myself a nice new computer.

It's great, it runs Far Cry 2 at ~25fps with full settings at 1440x900.

BUT, it's let down by it's 40gig hard drive. I filled it up with about 3 games within a day. Fucking hell.

I'd like opinions on SATA drives. I have been buying IDE drives all the time because my SATA drives always fail. I've had two of them, one just stopped working, I didn't even get an OS loaded onto it, and another stopped working after about 2 and a half months. It would randomly freeze up.

I liked the speed of SATA, when it worked. But It has never worked long enough for me.

Of the two sata drives I had, I also owned their IDE counterparts. The IDE ones worked perfectly where the SATA ones had failed.

So, I need a good, reliable sata drive for ~75 bucks.

It doesn't have to be the fastest of the fast, it just has to be reliable. I'm looking for 500gigs and up.

Thanks to anyone who can help.

Newegg hdd search $50-75 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010150014%204026&bop=And&Order=PRICED) - 750GB is a great deal for $75, but you can get 1TB for around $100. Looks like free shipping on a lot of stuff too, might want to jump on one of those.

Ill vouch for Seagate drives. I have a 2x250s in my desktop that have been going for a couple years now, and also a 160 in my laptop for a few months. Theyre all fast, cool, and quiet.

Believe it or not, there are only a few drives that will break the 100MB/s limit of ATA-6, so unless you have two drives on the same IDE channel going at the same time the speeds arent much faster over sata. NCQ in SATA does make a difference though, and 2nd gen perpendicular recording can hit 120MB/s on a single drive but idk if those are selling yet.

So going with the older style drive might be better for you considering your experience with sata so far. Youll get a little less space for your money though, i think theyre using the same controller boards as the SATA drives but with an IDE bridge chip added in that accounts for the difference in price.

You might want to look into why you had sata drives failing on you, maybe check your power supply- did you have the sata drives plugged into the sata power connector or molex? Your previous drives might have been defective or mishandled, especially if you bought them retail.

I've been using Molex, do you think that has anything to do with it?

I've been using Molex, do you think that has anything to do with it?

Maybe. If any drives say on the lable that they need 3.3v in addition to the standard 12v and 5v then its safe to say that a full sata power connector would be the best for it (even though theyre supposed to work fine without 3.3). Personally, im more fond of the molex because they stay in better and ive had a couple sata power connectors break. Might not hurt to use a multimeter on the psu while under heavy usage, see how stable your voltages are.

You coulda just had a 2-drive bad luck streak, who knows.

It might also make a difference to use a molex > sata adapter.

40gig hard drive

Wow, I had a hard drive bigger than that in 2003.

Wow, I had a hard drive bigger than that in 2003.

I think the computer it came from is from 2000 :mad:

So far, I've purchased and used two SATA hard drives, neither of which have failed. You should be able to pick up a SATA drive with at least 500GB capacity for under $75 at a decent computer retailer.

Yeah midnight rider im in the same boat as you man but i have an 80 gig HD and need to upgrade badly.