About a new Hard Drive

Jaylob4 · 18 Apr 2021

Win 10, 20H2.

Some advise please and hope this is the correct forum to ask for it

One of the grand children's birthdays is coming very soon and I've been struggling what to buy.

He doesn't usually like asking or hinting but yesterday evening mentioned he could really do with a larger HD, he is into Steam?? PC games and wants to fit an internal HDD, he says 4TB would be great so he can store his games onto.

I've had a word with him and thinking how hard can this get, so I'm thinking I'll get him 4TB or even 6TB.

So some reading then onto Amazon but now got myself a bit muddled, plenty of room inside his case for 2.5 or 3.5 HDD and remembering he is downloading and storing games only on to this new drive

Spin Speeds, is 5400 or 7200 going to be better for what he requires?

I found both WD and Seagate brands but then read both are using, SMR, not heard of this before, more reading, not great news I think but not a lot of choice either, how good/bad is SMR for his requirements?

What HDD should I get him, I'm thinking Non-SMR if possible, I've budgeted for around £100-£120.

His MOBO is an ASUS Prime B 350 Plus and has a 550SSD fitted.

Ghot · 18 Apr 2021

@Jaylob4

Western Digital Red Pro 4 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (WD4003FFBX) - PCPartPicker

Choose Storage - PCPartPicker

/edit

With only 550GB SSD, he's going to be installing games on the hard drive as well. Hence the 7200rpm spindle speed.
Also... try for 256MB cache.

The Western Digital Blacks and the Golds, have a 5 year warranty, so if it's in your budget, I would go for them.

I probably have 10 or more WD Blacks. They have never let me down.

Berton · 18 Apr 2021

Important information about upgrading to drives larger than 2TB.
mbr versus gpt at DuckDuckGo

Ghot · 18 Apr 2021

Berton said:

Important information about upgrading to drives larger than 2TB.
mbr versus gpt at DuckDuckGo

Good point. @Jaylob4 any hard drive larger than 2TB will have to be GPT partitioning scheme.

Before converting to GPT, the disk will show as 2TB, and 2TB unallocated.
A 4TB disk will show as 3726GB, after being converted to GPT,... this is normal.

These diskpart commands will convert the hard drive to GPT...

Open a command prompt as admin, and run these commands one at a time.

diskpart
lis dis
sel dis 6 (replace 6 with the actual number for the disk drive)
det dis (makes sure that the applicable disk drive was selected)
clean
convert gpt
create part pri
format fs=ntfs
exit
exit

Then you just open Disk Management, right click the Disk... and give it a drive letter.

Here's a look at my 4TB and 8TB Western Digital Blacks... they have more than one partition, but you'll get the idea...

Both pics are of the same drives. The top is from EaseUS Partition Master, and the bottom is from Disk Management.

Jaylob4 · 18 Apr 2021

Berton said:

Important information about upgrading to drives larger than 2TB.
mbr versus gpt at DuckDuckGo

Thanks Berton.

Berton · 18 Apr 2021

Glad to help.

idgat · 18 Apr 2021

Also consider... the larger the drive, the more data it can store. And if it fails, the more data that can be lost.

In considering this, an equivalent size backup (physical or cloud) should be factored in to any cost (if not already available).

Jaylob4 · 18 Apr 2021

Ghot said:

Good point. @Jaylob4 any hard drive larger than 2TB will have to be GPT partitioning scheme.

Bless you Ghot, thankyou.

I'm going to order today WD red 7200RPM.

I don't suppose my GS has any connector cables for the HDD, what do I need to get him?

I'm going to stretch the budget a bit and get him an extra stick of ram, he has 16gb of ram on board, no idea what make or speed, I will find that out and match it.

I note his ram slots, 2 are filled Dimm A2 & Dimm B2, can I just buy an extra 4 gig of ram and what slot should it go into?

Thanks for the conversion info' I will get him to sort it-------or may me give it a go myself.

Ghot · 18 Apr 2021

His motherboard should have come with 2 to 4 SSD cables. If not, you can get them at any comp store.
If you intend to add RAM, get another 16GB set (2 x 8GB)... the exact same that he already has.
The RAM he has should be in slots 2 and 4 counting away from the CPU.

The set you add will go into slots 1 and 3.

If you try getting weird with adding RAM that's NOT identical... you will pay for it, with instability and blue screens.

Although he should be OK with the 16GB he already has.

From his motherboard manual...

And yeah... his mobo came with two SSD cables. As I mentioned above, if he doesn't still have both... any comp store will have them. They are standardized.

SATA Cable III, Benfei 3 Pack SATA Cable III 6Gbps: Amazon.co.uk: Electronics

Jaylob4 · 18 Apr 2021

Ghot said:

His motherboard should have come with 2 to 4 SSD cables. If not, you can get them at any comp store.
If you intend to add RAM, get another 16GB set (2 x 8GB)... the exact same that he already has.

Thanks.

He hasn't mentioned ram or requiring it, just wanted to surprise him with a little extra, he's a great lad, they all are.

I agree, I wouldn't do odd things with ram, match or nothing but if 16gb is enough, I think I will leave it for now.

I will grab an extra cable, just in case.

That's what the board looks like, I can see inside the case but most of MB it is obliterated by a whopping great graphics card and the biggest CPU fan I've seen.

Thanks again Ghot, very much appreciated

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