Probably not the most interesting topic for this forum but...

I'm thinking about replacing one of my desktop desktop hard drive. I haven't bought any new signifigant hardware in the last three years and thus haven't really kept up. I'd like to know:

1) At the time of this posting, what are the better brands, or more simply, which ones should I avoid outright?

2) Are there any Partitioning issues with Windows 98 or with my BIOS (which is a little over three years old)? I'm probably going to get the largest capacity that's available as the time of this post like a 120G or 160G. Is that going to be a problem?

3) Are there any other utilities that might be helpful to have around? i.e. Norton Ghost, Drive Image, Partition Magic, etc
I plan to use one of them to backup the partition for my OS to the other hard drive that I am not replacing right nowm and then re-image it to the new drive.

4) Any recommendations on buying online?

Well you might look for certian specs. Me personaly I prefer Maxtor. also check out this post
http://empeg.comms.net/php/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=offtopic&Number=87618&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=0&fpart=1#Post87794
Norton Ghost is a good program just read the README file carefully. if things turn south on you there is the possibility of turning your old partition into an exact copy of your brand new hard disk. Which has happened

There have been some problems with the IBM 60GXP hard drives. I've got one but I've never had any problems with it though. YMMV

You may have trouble using 120+GB drives with your old BIOS. Some larger drives come with a new controller card that supports much bigger drives.

If you can, you should really reinstall from scratch. You'll be amazed at the speed up from just reinstalling Windows. It tends to collect crap from installing/uninstalling applications and just general use.

- Trevor

For simple ghosting, doesn't Maxtor supply a free prog on their site? And I used it to ghost a 20GB IBM drive to a 25GB WD without any problems (I think. the 25GB busted a bit later, but may just be software related and not to the ghosting process.)

I've had a few Quantum drives with a Philips chip burn out. As in, the chip exploded. These were a fireball lct and fireball Lx. Maxtor apparently is incorporating quantum's technology into their drives. Maybe avoid drives with these chips?

In my experience, almost all HD manufacturers have problems with their first runs of any HD. I usually wait 3-4 mos until I feel all (most) of the bugs are worked out of assembly and QC. I once had 4 out of 6 WD Caviar 6.4's die in 1 week, They were bought 2 weeks after they were released. Returned them all, waited a few more weeks, bought 6 more, all perfect. Have never had a problem since.

BTW, I too have Ghosted the wrong partition. (must have been drunk or something) and erased 40 gigs in like 5 seconds flat. I mean it was FAST. ;8^) The worst thing was it wasn't my HD.

"Sometimes when you cry,
no one sees your tears,
Sometimes when you're happy,
no one sees your smile,

But fart just one time..."

5 seconds flat. I mean it was FAST.
yeah when you screw the pooch you know it quick

I guess it's better than having to wait for 2 hours while it "cleans" your drive. You can start putting things back as fast as possible.

yeah when you screw the pooch you know it quick

I know I'm going to regret asking this, but where does the expression "screw the pooch" come from? Under what circumstances could one accidentally screw a pooch?

Peter

I picked it up when i worked in the T.V. industry. I wasn't surrounded by the most inlightened people. but the phrase "screwing the pooch adds sort of a sense of humor to an otherwise very unhumorous mistake.
such as:
after blowing every single card in an uplink encoder
after dropping an Empeg
after waking up next to the waitress from the night before(ouch)
in short, nobody really screws pooches (well i guess there has to be someone somewhere, but i dont know them)
It's just a phrase i associate with botching things to an unfixable magnitude

The problem with Re-installing from scratch is that I have two years worth of antivirus updates. Any idea if there is a single file that has the viral signatures that I can offload somewhere else?

I guess I could just buy a newer edition of Norton antivirus.

Erm. It isn't incremental... You just need the latest virus signature database and any other updated modules....

- Trevor