HELP! Need a new hard drive!

[unstuckintime]

Hey Gang,
Ok I am having all kinds of trouble with the 'puter and I am going to have to reinstall windows 98; I figure now is a good time to upgrade to a larger HD. My current one is 6gig and it is pretty darn near full. I can't spend more than $100 (single dad). Can somebody walk me thru a good deal on a 20+ gig for around $100. I am a newbie to all this price matching stuff. Also, how hard is it to transfer the stuff from the old drive to the new one? Are selective transfers possible? Any help is appreciated. I am running an AMD k62 300mhz if that makes any difference.

Thanks!!!

 

[Pariah]

Onvia has a 20GB Maxtor and Seagate for $100, no rebates or anything required. There probably isn't much of a difference between the two.

If you want to transfer random programs and stuff to the new drive, just install win98 on the new drive, then put the old drive in and copy the stuff over. If you want to transfer everything, I recommend going to Powerquest's site and downloading the trial version of Drive Image Pro. It is uncrippled and does exactly what it claims to do, which is to make an exact copy of you drive.

 

[DDad]

You might want to check out the Hot Deals forums.Latest I saw there was for a WD 45 g, 5400 rpm for $133.
Also, you might check http://www.pricewatch.com. If you find a deal that is suitable, check the resellers reputation at http://www.resellerratings.com

 

[konichiwa]

Then you can use pointclick.com to get 10% off your $100 = $90 shipped.

 

[CayJon]

Get the Maxtor from Onvia.com. Free shipping, plus you get the Maxtor utilities disk to fdisk, format & copy hd to hd.

 

[Ulysses]

To set up your new drive see:
http://www.zdnet.com/pcmag/stories/solutions/0,8224,2586419,00.html

If you buy a retail version of a drive it should come with a utility program and instructions that enable you to transfer everything from your old drive to the new, set up partitions on the new drive etc. These utilities can actually be pretty useful too if you use them to back up files to the old drive, as I do.

If you don't buy the retail version of a drive, but instead get the OEM version (which is what I'd recommend since you're on a tight budget), then you may not get the utility. But it should be available for downloading at the manufacturer's site. They usually fit on a floppy.

Western Digital has an excellent utility of this type callod Data LifeGuard, and it can be used if at least one of your drives (new or old) is a WD. Maxtor also has a good utility like this, I have heard.

You should not have to loose any data or go thru a big rigamarole to install a new HDD - it is too common a thing to do.

 

[ButtMunch]

Get a maxtor. There reliable.

I like my 30 gig

 

[Crypticburn]

get Western Digital, they're reliable

 

[FaultCode]

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid=45&threadid=202465

 

[dszd0g]

I would choose Maxtor IDE over Seagate IDE any day, the Maxtors are much more reliable.