Thread: is this old hard drive any good?

  1. #1
    Novice Programmer Pyroteh's Avatar
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    is this old hard drive any good?

    I recently found an old gateway system that the school was throwing away.... I want to back up my hard drive so I asked and got the hard drive out of their system... the thing is... I don't know how old the gateway system is.... heres what was labeled on the old HD

    Western Digital
    Caviar 2850
    AT Compatible Intelligent Drive
    Drive Parameters: 1654 cyl * 16 heads * 63 spt * 853.6 MB

    I checked the western digital site and I couldn't find this model.....

  2. #2
    Registered User Frobozz's Avatar
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    I seriously doubt you are going to be able to back up much of anything to 853.6MB of space. You might as well use a CD and a burner.

  3. #3
    Novice Programmer Pyroteh's Avatar
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    yeah... thats kind of true...
    I just thought it would be kind of neat to put it to use.. haha

  4. #4
    Registered User major_small's Avatar
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    well... I guess you could always use it for cache or something... here's the driver to kick you off (if you still wanna try it): http://www.storagedrivers.com/drivers/49/49781.htm

    ...and the going price: $25 USD

    edit: <$25 USD
    Last edited by major_small; 07-14-2005 at 01:18 AM.
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  5. #5
    Novice Programmer Pyroteh's Avatar
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    haha sweet thx for the driver.... I already have the hardware... hehe... I can get another one free if I want too..... the school around here is just throwing away two old computers.... that still have all the parts... and a monitor... plus a few extra boxes... I didn't have the chance to check them out to see what they were.....

  6. #6
    and the hat of int overfl Salem's Avatar
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    You'd probably find that since the drive is so old, that whatever IDE interface you plugged it into, it would degrade the performance of anything else in the vicinity on the basis of finding the "lowest common denominator" across all the connected devices.

    Since brand spanking new drives with much more capacity and performance are available for not a lot more than that, it's not really a choice.

    Nice backup drive for experiments with older machines, but not for your new ones.
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  7. #7
    Novice Programmer Pyroteh's Avatar
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    hmm.... maybe I should just order a newer more up-to-date hard drive... what would be a good choice?

  8. #8
    Registered User xxxrugby's Avatar
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    With what are you trying to Back Up. You wanna make Image (Symantec Norton Ghost or Acronis True Image).
    Where you wanna back up it. Back up must be make on another HDD or DVD/CD Drive.

    O yes. Your HDD is pretty old. About Ten Years.!!!
    Sorry for spelling errors, not English!
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  9. #9
    Frequently Quite Prolix dwks's Avatar
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    Do you have a desktop? Pyroteh, I mean.
    dwk

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  10. #10
    Novice Programmer Pyroteh's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by dwks
    Do you have a desktop? Pyroteh, I mean.
    yupper

  11. #11
    *this
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    IMHO I wouldnt use anything less than a gig, I have tons of 10 gig hd's from xbox's and stuff and I use them sometimes to back up my servers.

  12. #12
    Registered User mrafcho001's Avatar
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    I would just put it in and store useless crap on it .. like music and stuff thats what i am doing with my 3.8Gb HDD..
    i have my music and useless crap that i am most likely never to use

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