I'm building a box

I'd recommend going for a Western Digital SE Drive, as the HDD manufacturers recently decided that people don't like long warranties* on their standard drives, and have changed the HDD warranties to 12 months from 3 year warranty.... The WD SE Drives however, have retained their 3 year warranty...
Read the Rant @ THG

Most of them kept the long warranty on their SCSI Drives, but since october, most ATA HDD's have only a 1 year warranty...

My work sells a lot of maxtor drives, and we don't see many faulty units coming back in, but I'd prefer the risk of the disk dying if I could get a replacement for 3 years.....
Not to mention that HDD manufacturers in their warranty replacement can try to retrieve data from the dead drive....


* I'd really like to know how they came to this conclusion.. with the extremely high rate of failure on Fujitsu's MPG3 model HDD's, people want their damn warranty to be as long as possible...
You can read more in this article on The Register

While browsing and searching for some help for you, I found this interesting tutorial on Building your own Box. I read it and found it very informative and helpful. Please let me know how everything goes and how successful it is! :)

cool, tanx....I didn't think I'd get so much feedback.... :D
I'v decided to get a 60Gb Maxstor instead, and one or two cold-cathode Fluresent blue Light's...about 30cm in length... :)

hmmm, matty, do you really thin they would try to get data of EVERY drive?? that seems like alot of work....

- Noia

Noia: here are are a few suggestions that I have...

First I highly recommend going with WD's drives for 2 reasons...1 being the reason that Matty Cross stated and 2 being that at the moment, WD makes the ONLY ultra ATA drives that have a wopping 8 mb of cache! That's right that's not a typo 8 mb. its only the standard 7200 RPM, but do to the 8 mb of cache that certain models that they make have, they're so damn fast, they beat out most SCSI hard drives even...I upgraded my setup recently and got their smallest 8 mb cache model that they make (80 gb)...I haven't had any problems with it and the performance of the drive is amazing, not to mention it only cost me like $10 more dollars (from what I hear, the euro has about the same value as the dollar) than the standard 80 gb model ;)

My second suggestion is since RAM is not at all expensive right now and since I do believe that moterboard will support up to 1 gb of RAM...(I'm sure you know where I'm going with this) I highly recommend buying a 1 gb RAM stick for it from either Kingston or Crucial...wait a minute sorry a 1 gb RAM stick isn't a stick, that's a friggin BRANCH! HAHA (I could pick up a 2700 RPM DDR 1 gb RAM stick here at a local pc shop for about $150)

Well peace out and good luck with whatever you choose...

Just out of intrest what o.s. are you going to run on it?

Noia:
cool specs. but remember it all depends on what u are working with ur PC ... what OS, Applications .. bla bla etc.

but in general, it's a good specs. Good Luck :)

Well, I'm first gona install XP proffesional, and once I get another drive I'm gona install a *nix system to play around with....I'm mostly gona use the Machine for.....every thing...gaming, Work, Internet etc etc....I know the spec's arn't amazing....yet....but I'm making sure I have room to upgrade....

Has any one checked out the Flower heatsink...it's AMAZING!!!

- Noia

Quote:

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Originally posted here by Noia


hmmm, matty, do you really thin they would try to get data of EVERY drive?? that seems like alot of work....

- Noia

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No, I doubt that they would. But they can do it... here is an extract from one of the communications with one party, however, this was in regards to data security on returns..

Quote:

---

Drives are sent to #### to be processed as follows:

* To be determined if drives are to be repaired or scrapped
* If the drives are to be scrapped then they are destroyed and no data can be recovered.
* If the drives are to be repaired then the drives will proceed to be tested
* Part of the test is to perform a write test on the drives: any data on the drives will be erased and cannot be recovered.
* If the drives fails the test: then they are sent to a Repair center where they will be repaired and retested

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Now, as you can see, they have the ability to access the disk, so they would be able to recover the data.....

Matty, yes the 8MB cache disks are very 'hot' but difficult to get in Europe. Almost all stores have a shortage on these disks (sometimes you have to wait 3 weeks). Anyway the Cache boosts some things up (serious!).

Noia do not forget a quality screen for instance a Eizo DVI FlatPanel ;)

lol Vk... I Wish I could get that screen, but I'm on a budget....one that's VERY VERY thin....so I'm gona use my old screen, which is enough for now, I hope one day though to get a flatscreen and a beamer set up...then I'll have a 2 meter Screen :D Amazing gaming....
We have one i school.....it's da bomb when you'r playing GTA3...

- Noia