Large HDD On Old System?

[Salvador]

I'm wondering if an older Celeron 366 system can handle a larger hdd like a 30 gb. I was going to upgrade from a 3 gb drive to something around 10 or 15 gig's, but the prices aren't that much more for a 30 or 40 gig and if I bought something like that, I could use it in another machine. Are there any drawbacks to putting a larger hdd in an older, slower system? Will it bog the machine down?

Also.. If I'm running a 5400 rpm ATA66, do I need another controller card to run at 7200 rpm and ATA100? Or do I just swap drives?

TIA,

Sal

 

[bacillus]

that large hdd shouldn't upset your system. a word of warning though as being an older system, you bios might not be able to recognise the whole of your new hdd. suggest you look at the latest bios for your board to see if it will support a 30-40 gig hdd.

 

[Salvador]

It's basically a cheap Emachines that I just picked up. I have no idea if the bios would support a larger drive. I would go smaller, but I'd rather spend a few dollars more and get something I could use in another system.

Actually, I want to get the drive that I want to put in a system that I plan on building this fall. I figure that I can use the drive now, take it out put it in the new computer and install the old 3.2 gb drive in this Emachines and then use this as another backup computer.

Thanks again,

Sal

 

[bacillus]

a surefire option if bios doesn't fully support the hdd , would be to get the hdd & a promise ata66/100 pci controller card. the promise has its own bios & would fully support any hdd up to 128Gb plus you would extract the max performance out of the hdd!

edit:

<< Also.. If I'm running a 5400 rpm ATA66, do I need another controller card to run at 7200 rpm and ATA100? Or do I just swap drives? >>


does this mean you already have a controller card installed? in that case just swap hdds.

 

[Salvador]

No.. I don't have a controller card installed. I just guessed that I was running at ATA66 instead of ATA100.

How much is a controller card? What's a good one to get? Would this controller card be better than the built in controller on a high end AMD mobo? I'm thinking maybe I could run this controller card in the AMD system that I plan to build in a couple of months.

I guess what I could do is try the drive, if it doesn't work, get a controller card. That is if it's not too expensive and if it is expensive I'd have to find out if it would be of any benefit in a better system.

Thanks again,

Sal

Doh! You said get a Promise controller. I'm guessing that is the brand.