Need advice for hard drive upgrade

[captmorgan72]

I am looking at this http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3255389&Sku=TSD-250AS7 but what do you guys think? It's cheap but is it any good for gaming? I don't want to spend a ton on something I don't really need. My current drive is old and only 75 gigs and is almost full. I uninstalled all of my games to make room for Sacred 2 (25gig) but will only have a couple gigs of free space left.

[BlueBard]

I'm no expert anymore, but...

First, you will need a SATA controller if your PC doesn't already have one.  You should have already noticed that the OEM drives don't come with cables or mounting hardware.  Also pay attention to the Operating System requirements noted on that page.

Other than those potential gotchas, Seagate drives are generally fine and should work okay.  I wouldn't buy a drive these days that had less than 250 GB.

If you think that your hard drive is going to be an issue for gaming, pay attention to the specs for spindle speed (7200 RPM is average), transfer rate, and seek/write times.  You might have to go back to the manufacturers' websites to get full specs.

[bredon7777]

Not to threadjack, but it looked like you said Sacred 2 takes up 25 freaking gigs of HD space?

Does it have hyper-realistic, photo quality, real-time generated 3d?  Cause thats what I'd expect for 25 gigs.

</threadjack>

[stumpy]

Bredon, the game features (and system requirements) page does recommend 25 GB free hard drive space (20 GB min). I thought the same thing when I saw it. Does it come on like five DVDs or something (compression notwithstanding)?  :blink:

BB, spindle speeds are still important, but increasing areal densities have taken some of speed impact out of transfer rates. Of course, seek times and so on are still impacted. I remember the excitement at my first 10K RPM 18 GB SCSI drive years ago. Ah, memories...  :D

From what I can see, TD isn't even selling the 7200.10 model anymore. But, the 7200.11 is still available, and pretty cheap.

BTW, I am out of touch on hard drive tech (and still a little dazzled by 500 GB notebook drives), but my usual first stop for info on this sort of thing is still storagereview.com.

[randyripoff]

I would not order from TigerDirect.  You can likely find the same drive at a better price elsewhere.

[Lunarman]

Go to ebuyer and order something of around 1tb if I were. Even 1tb should only cost around $200 nowadays.
In fact, I just looked and there's a huge one for £73 pounds. I'd check out the ratings and go for a biggish one with 5 stars.

[captmorgan72]

Bredon, the game features (and system requirements) page does recommend 25 GB free hard drive space (20 GB min). I thought the same thing when I saw it. Does it come on like five DVDs or something (compression notwithstanding)?  :blink:

BB, spindle speeds are still important, but increasing areal densities have taken some of speed impact out of transfer rates. Of course, seek times and so on are still impacted. I remember the excitement at my first 10K RPM 18 GB SCSI drive years ago. Ah, memories...  :D

From what I can see, TD isn't even selling the 7200.10 model anymore. But, the 7200.11 is still available, and pretty cheap.

BTW, I am out of touch on hard drive tech (and still a little dazzled by 500 GB notebook drives), but my usual first stop for info on this sort of thing is still storagereview.com.

About Sacred 2, yeah on the box it says it takes up 25 gigs. After installation it only took 12.5 gigs on the drive. The game comes on two dvds and it is a very awesome game. Very beautiful art and graphic design and just a blast to play. Lots of great humor by the developers even when the game is loading. One of my all time favorite pc games for sure.