How do I check used HD

[DirtyHolt]

First a little background.My Comp.is HP Pavillion,Pentium4/2.99Gig ram.WindowsXP Media Edition 2002 SP3.500Gig HD 32 bit OS.I obtained a HD out of a crash(believe to be pwer surge damage) Newer HP,OS was Vista.
32casheHD.The Hd in my system is only 16 cashe.My first issue,does it work.Do I install it,format it?
Possibly interested in running Both OS??
Any Ideas,thoughts,or issues.WHAT CAN WE DO???

 

[T_Yamamoto]

you cant run both OS's at the same time LMAO
i dont think your computer will even accept it even if you nuke the HD to clean out all the data

 

[mfenn]

First of all: spaces. Please use them.

Second, the HDD will work fine, though you will likely need to reinstall the OS. If you're worried about the drive's health, you can download the manufacturer's diagnostic tools to check it out. Not that past performance is any guarantee of future reliability.

 

[DirtyHolt]

Thanks for your reply. Sorry on the no spaces thing.
Would I be able to install the 32 cache HD along with my original HDD, Reboot.Go into My Computer,and just format the 32 cache HDD? Then shut down remove my old HDD. Then reinstall my original windows xp? One other question if you would. What is the differance between a 16 cache and a 32 cache ,Speed??

 

[T_Yamamoto]

The cache is pretty much helping the HDD load files. The more you have, the faster itll load. BUT, it also depends on how much RPM the HDD is made for. So High RPM+High Cache=fast boot speed.

Off topic but
The hybrid HDD's have fast RPM and a high amount of cache, creating a "SSD Like" experiance

 

[mfenn]

Thanks for your reply. Sorry on the no spaces thing.
Would I be able to install the 32 cache HD along with my original HDD, Reboot.Go into My Computer,and just format the 32 cache HDD? Then shut down remove my old HDD. Then reinstall my original windows xp? One other question if you would. What is the differance between a 16 cache and a 32 cache ,Speed??

Yes, you can do that. Although, the Windows XP installer will give you and option to format so it's not really necessary.

A drive with more cache is theoretically faster at random I/O, but it usually doesn't make much of a difference (few percent). A newer, larger drive will generally be faster though because it uses denser platters which increase transfer rates (given the same rotational speed).