An incipient hard drive failure recently forced me to go shopping for a bare drive for the first time in about six years. The fact that I saw it coming is miracle enough. Windows XP actually warned me each time I rebooted that the boot drive would soon fail and I should back it up immediately. Well, I had a spare, even larger 250 GB drive, but it took me a week to get the proper software I settled on Acronis True Image because it gets better reviews than Ghost. A few hours after the backup, the boot drive failed. The symptom was one I had never experienced. The boot drive was master and the clone drive was slave. When the master failed, Windows couldn't switch to the slave because the master controller was what failed. So I disconnected the bad drive and replugged the clone as master. I had forgotten the F2 trick to open BIOS setup, but the True Image CD came to the rescue. It has a clickable link that says "Boot Windows." So at least I could surf the web to find the F2 trick and fix the BIOS..
Anyway, now I needed a spare drive. The previous one had been spinning alongside the failed drive since I bought the desktop in 2004. Best to assume it is doomed to fail before long.
Drives have changed a lot in six years! The old style interface, ATA/ATAPI (aka IDE or parallel ATA) is hard to find and prices are rising. The new standard is the cheaper SATA (serial ATA.) On top of that, my "old" PC has the almost as old PCI bus on the motherboard. Big decision: buy old technology or new? Web surfing to the rescue!
It turns out that even after buying new signal and power cables (of course SATA had to be different!) and buying a PCI version of the SATA controller, it was a break-even deal to go with the new technology. A 500 GB SATA drive goes for an amazing $41.00 to $45.00. There are cheaper ways than a new controller, but adapters cost just a few dollars less and you can only attach one SATA drive to it. That's a nice solution for a TiVo upgrade, but I had to assume I would need a second SATA drive soon. My new controller can accept two SATA internal drives or one internal and one external.
It had been a long time since I looked at the technology, but a few hours on the web brought me up to speed. Still, rather than order on line, I decided to call Tiger Direct and get them to validate my choices. Good move. I had missed the fact that it needed a power cable adapter.
The drive, controller, and cables are due here in two days. I feel comfortable that it will go well. Frankly, the worst part of the install is likely to be getting the failed drive out of the case. It's already disconnected, but the screws holding it in require a 90-degree Phillips screwdriver.
As for Tiger Direct, more news there. They now charge Texas state sales tax. Seems they have a hookup with one CompUSA store in the Dallas area and are opening a TigerDirect store near it.
