Hard disk drives, Seagate  Western Digital (IDE, SATA or Serial ATA and Laptop hard drives)

There are mainly three types of hard disk drives, IDE hard disks and SCSI hard disks and then the new Serail ATA Hard disks (sometimes refer to as SATA hard drives) . We do stock only IDE and selected rang of SATA hard disk drives. They are comparatively cheap and provide better value for money for the average user than SCSI hard drives.. SCSI hard disk drives are used mainly in high end applications and the cost of the drives and the required interface cards can be three times the cost of equal size IDE hard disk. Hard disks are used to store data and programs on your computer. Some people wrongly refereed to it as memory. But lack of enough hard disk space can bring up error messages on your screen similar to "Not enough memory... ". If there is not enough hard disk space first option is to do some house keeping and remove unwanted programs and data. As a rule of thumb do not fill the hard disks beyond 75% of the capacity.  For more help on the hard disks visit our hard disk drive help page

There is new Serial ATA  specification being pushed around the hard disks. But still IDE hard disks are to full fill ATA 66 spcifications. I mean even the top notch hard disk drives does not transfer data at 66MB/s speeds. Then there is Ultra ATA 133, Ultra ATA 100. It  is only a spec and any drive which is Ultra ATA 100 will not by default pump data at 100MB/sec.
The actual performance will depend on
1. The rotating speed of the drive (ie. 5400 or 7200rpm or 10000 rpm)
2.  Cache built on the drive (Can be 128k or 512k on some older brands, but  2 Mb on all current  Seagate and Western digital drives  Some high end Seagate and Western digital drives has 8MB cache)
3. Other unique drive parameters.

There is a selection of motherboards and controllers available with ATA 100/ 133 interfaces. But still we have to see any difference in performance due to just the ATA 100 or 133 spec.
You should be still able to use them on your old motherboard in 99% of the cases without any changes. If you need to disable the Ultra ATA 100 capability of the drives, you can download a utility from the manufacturer web site.

Size limitation due to Motherboard BIOS

There are several size limitations imposed on the drives due to the motherboard bios. There is the very old 512meg limit which should not be in any of the computers in use today, I hope.  Then there is a 8 Gig limit and again 32 Gig limit and then again at 137 gig. Some of these limitations can be overcome by installing drivers available from hard disk manufacturers. Visit our hard disk drive help page for more information. Other option is to upgrade the BIOS of the motherboard (Not recommended for the inexperienced)

For an independant review of Hard disk drives visit Storagereview.com  

• DK23EA Series 

  Up to 60 GB total capacity
  9.5 mm high drive for maximum capacity slimline portable applications
  Giant MR head and MEEPRML read channel technology
  32-bit RISC microprocessor, shock sensor, S.M.A.R.T.

  Model Capacity (GB) Interface Speed (RPM) DK23EA-60 60.011 ATA-5 (Enhanced IDE) 4,200 DK23EA-40 40.007 ATA-5 (Enhanced IDE) 4,200 DK23EA-30 30.005 ATA-5 (Enhanced IDE) 4,200

Visit http://www.hgst.com/hdd/dk23xx/dk23ea.html for more information.

• DK23DA Series 

Up to 40 GB total capacity
9.5 mm high drive for maximum capacity slimline portable applications
Giant MR head and MEEPRML read channel technology
32-bit RISC microprocessor, shock sensor, S.M.A.R.T.

Model Capacity (GB) Interface Speed (RPM) DK23DA-40F 40.007 ATA-5 (Enhanced IDE) 4,200 DK23DA-30F 30.005 ATA-5 (Enhanced IDE) 4,200 DK23DA-20F 20.003 ATA-5 (Enhanced IDE) 4,200 DK23DA-10F 10.056 ATA-5 (Enhanced IDE) 4,200

• DK23CA-20 Specifications

20.003 GB total capacity in 9.5 mm high package for maximum capacity slimline notebooks
ATA-5 interface with 2048 kB read/write cache
Ultra DMA mode 5 (100 MB/s max.) supported
GMR head and MEEPRML read channel technology
32-bit RISC micro processor, Shock sensor, S.M.A.R.T.

Total Capacity 20.003 GB
Z-Height 9.5 mm
Number of Disks 2
Interface ATA-5 (Enhanced IDE)
Average Seek Time 12 ms
Internal Transfer Rate 16.3 - 30.2 MB/s
Interface Transfer Rate 16.6 MB/s max.
(PIO Mode 4/
Multiword DMA Mode 2)
/100 MB/s max. (Ultra DMA 5)
Data Buffer 2048 kB
Rotational Speed 4,200 rpm
Power Requirements +5V ±5%
Shock Operating 1.764 m/s2 (180 G) or less,
2 ms half sine wave
Non-Operating 7.840m/s2 (800 G) or less,
2 ms half sine wave
Weight 95 g
Acoustic Noise 2.8 Bels (typ.)

1. Seagate 5400 RPM ATA 100 Hard disk drives with 2meg Cache.

   (Currently available sizes 20Gig, 40Gig)

2. Seagate Baracuda 7200 RPM ATA 100 Hard disk drives with 2meg Cache.

   (Currently available sizes 40, 60, 80, 120, 160   Gig) Some Seagate barracuda drives has 8mb cache (Check the spec or the product details)

3. Seagate Barracuda Serial ATA drives. 7200RPM - 8mb cache.
   (Available in sizes 80 gig and above . You need SATA interface on the motherboard or seperate SATA controller card. )

1. Western Digital 5400 RPM ATA 100 Hard disk drives with 2meg Cache.

   (Currently available sizes 20Gig, 40Gig, 60gig, 80 gig)

2. Western Digital 7200 RPM ATA 100 Hard disk drives with 2meg Cache.

   (Currently available sizes 40, 60, 80, 120   Gig)

3. Western Digital 7200 RPM ATA 100 Hard disk drives with 8meg Cache.

   (Currently available sizes 40, 60, 80, 120,180 200   Gig)

4. Western Digital 10,000 RPM ATA 100 Hard disk drives with 8meg Cache.
   Currently available in size 36 gig, 70 gig

Adaptec ATA RAID 1200A IDE RAID Card

Ideal for entry level Servers, high end workstations and demanding computer users.
Improved data protection and/or performance when combined with 2 or more hard disks.

Wire ATA RAID Controller Card

Ideal for Video editing and other demanding  users.
Improved data protection and/or performance when combined with 2 or more hard disks.

Supports :
Windows 98 or above
Windows NT does not support USB
Compatible for   Windows(me) and Windows 2000 Windows XP
Macintosh (MAC OS 8.6 or later) Need usb ports on your mac.

Also available Firewire Hard disk case.

Hitachi laptop hard drive information 40 gig DK23DA-40 (Price guide $ 297)

http://www.hgst.com/hdd/support/dk/2/23da40fspec.html

Service charges:

1. Hard disk installtion, partitioning and formatting (from $29)

2. Data transfer from one disk to another (from $ 29)