To satisfy my never ending need for larger real-estate in the computer world I decided to invest in a new secondary hard disk. The need emerged out of my habit of downloading lot of stuff from the internet which quickly gobbled up all the space in my current 120GB hard drive.
On a fine Saturday, when rest of the world was exchanging kisses and showering flowers on their loved ones (Since it was 14th of Feb, V-Day) , I set out to SP road to purchase the Hard disk. I had decided my budget of 2K for the hard disk. Any thing in that range and i would go for it.
These days the hard drives come in two flavours PATA and SATA. The former is getting obsolete due to higher speed offered by the SATA, which stands for Serial ATA. A little google exercise will tell you that ATA stands for AT-Attachement where AT stands for Adavanced technology. I quickly checked my mobo specs to find that it sported 4 SATA and 2 IDE channels. So the choice was done, I will buy a SATA hard disk. I checked if i had the necessary cable to connect the data line to the Motherboard (thankfully the Gigabyte motherboard had one shipped with it).
Gleefully, I boarded the bus to SP road to buy a SATA drive. After going into multiple shops i decided to buy it from a bloke who was ready to sell it to me for 2080 + 4% tax (for 250 Gigs).
Theek hai...so i got the hard disk and raced back home. After opening the cabinet and stuck the hard disk in the bay connected the 7-pin cable into the data cable slot on the motherboard and the other end into the hard disk. Just then i realized, How do i connect the power cables to this thing. It is only then that i realized that my SMPS still belonged to the generation of PATA. It did not provide the necessary, SATA drive compatible sockets. The SATA drives require 3 different voltages in contrast with the PATA drives which could with just 12V and 5V. The 3.3V line which is new in the SATA drives are necessary only if the HOT Plugging feature of the SATA drives is needed. Thanks !! If it was not for this my 2K would have just gone down the drain. I rushed back to SP road to get an adapter for the Molex 4-Pin connector to the SATA power socket converter. After 30 minutes later and poorer by an equal amount of INR i was back in front of PC with the connector. I quickly connected it and then added the mounting screws and ensured the Hard-disk was fit snugly.
The BIOS was helpful and detected the drive instantly. However, in windows I had first partition the drive by going to the disk mangement section ( My Computer->manage). Soon, I had 3 new logical drives ( H,I,J) each of 80 gigs...A'int that cool. Right now it uses the Emulated IDE drivers for SATA provided in Windows XP. I have to still check if there is some way to get the AHCI drivers for this.
On a fine Saturday, when rest of the world was exchanging kisses and showering flowers on their loved ones (Since it was 14th of Feb, V-Day) , I set out to SP road to purchase the Hard disk. I had decided my budget of 2K for the hard disk. Any thing in that range and i would go for it.
These days the hard drives come in two flavours PATA and SATA. The former is getting obsolete due to higher speed offered by the SATA, which stands for Serial ATA. A little google exercise will tell you that ATA stands for AT-Attachement where AT stands for Adavanced technology. I quickly checked my mobo specs to find that it sported 4 SATA and 2 IDE channels. So the choice was done, I will buy a SATA hard disk. I checked if i had the necessary cable to connect the data line to the Motherboard (thankfully the Gigabyte motherboard had one shipped with it).
Gleefully, I boarded the bus to SP road to buy a SATA drive. After going into multiple shops i decided to buy it from a bloke who was ready to sell it to me for 2080 + 4% tax (for 250 Gigs).
"Bhaiyaa, Why dont you make it 2100 and close the deal", I asked.
"Nahi saab, I get only 25 Rs in this deal", was his answer ( as expected)
"Nahi saab, I get only 25 Rs in this deal", was his answer ( as expected)
Theek hai...so i got the hard disk and raced back home. After opening the cabinet and stuck the hard disk in the bay connected the 7-pin cable into the data cable slot on the motherboard and the other end into the hard disk. Just then i realized, How do i connect the power cables to this thing. It is only then that i realized that my SMPS still belonged to the generation of PATA. It did not provide the necessary, SATA drive compatible sockets. The SATA drives require 3 different voltages in contrast with the PATA drives which could with just 12V and 5V. The 3.3V line which is new in the SATA drives are necessary only if the HOT Plugging feature of the SATA drives is needed. Thanks !! If it was not for this my 2K would have just gone down the drain. I rushed back to SP road to get an adapter for the Molex 4-Pin connector to the SATA power socket converter. After 30 minutes later and poorer by an equal amount of INR i was back in front of PC with the connector. I quickly connected it and then added the mounting screws and ensured the Hard-disk was fit snugly.
The BIOS was helpful and detected the drive instantly. However, in windows I had first partition the drive by going to the disk mangement section ( My Computer->manage). Soon, I had 3 new logical drives ( H,I,J) each of 80 gigs...A'int that cool. Right now it uses the Emulated IDE drivers for SATA provided in Windows XP. I have to still check if there is some way to get the AHCI drivers for this.
