Illiad86 Posted July 9, 2010 Share Posted July 9, 2010 oh hunny :sad: E-machines!!! ARGHHHH :blink: But, yeah, you could easily install a new HDD in there. Check inside your case and see if it has SATA ports. I'm not sure...because yeah...that's a cheap desktop :tongue: They could be jerks and not have those in there and you'd be stuck with IDE. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chibievil Posted July 9, 2010 Share Posted July 9, 2010 u could get an external hardrive, as it uses usb ports and u just plug and play, no need to open up the pc and it just acts like another harddrive i have a 1tb hardrive which wasnt cheap but the sizes can be from around 60gb up to 1 or 2tb i think. and it will be around the same price as an internal. and since its going into a pc your not going to be moving around alot so i would reconmend that instead Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bben46 Posted July 9, 2010 Share Posted July 9, 2010 Yes, definitely check to see whether you have SATA or IDE connections for your HD. Be sure you have a place to put a second HD - With the old one and a new one you should have plenty of room. Both types of HD are the same physical size, but use different connectors. If you have IDE, be sure your IDE cable has a second drive connector on it. (Both drives plug into the same cable) If not you will need a cable with 2. drive connectors - hopefully your DVD drive has a separate cable- most do, a few use the same cable as the HD making things difficult. You should also have a spare 4 pin power plug available. If you have SATA, you will need a SATA data cable (each SATA drive plugs into it's own data cable) and possibly a SATA power adapter - SATA uses a different power connector, but an adapter is readily available to convert from the 4 pin used on the IDE drives. If by some chance your motherboard actually supports both IDE and SATA, get the SATA drive as it is the newer technology. A 1TB SATA hard drive should cost less than US $80. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paxan_1 Posted July 9, 2010 Share Posted July 9, 2010 Hi ub3rman, i would buy a new harddrive. If you have a tower case i think you can easily add another drive. If you haven't done that, it is easy. Just some screws and 2 cables, which you can't mix. The best price/capacity ratio have 2GB drives at the moment. In my opinion the EARS series of Western Digital are really nice. The can throttle down the rotation speed and so they are very silent, but they have these new advanced format. This is my next hard drive, for sure :smile: Paxan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ub3rman123 Posted July 9, 2010 Author Share Posted July 9, 2010 I looked at it, there's four black sockets in a quad that have a small L shaped thing inside them. Looks like a SATA port to me. What do you mean by a 4-pin power plug? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bben46 Posted July 9, 2010 Share Posted July 9, 2010 Some of the older BIOS will not support a 2TB drive unless they are flashed with a newer version first - and on an E-Machine computer it is a good possibility that not only would that BIOS not support the 2TB, but there may not be a BIOS upgrade either. The older BIOS supported up to 1.5 TB I think. You could call their tech support and ask though. A quick price check on TigerDirect.com (US$) SATA (Serial ATA)2TB $109.991.5TB $79.991 TB $69.99 500 GB $39.99160 GB $37.99 IDE Nothing larger than 500 GB listed 500 GB $79.99250 GB $59.99160 GB $44.99 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RedVexHK Posted July 9, 2010 Share Posted July 9, 2010 a new HDD is always good.. but also as suggested.. an external USB drive for file storage rocks.. it also saves all your mod files so if you ever lose your native drive.. you still have the files backed up on the external drive. Suggestion is also clear your browser cache and check the temp folder. it may be overfilled with junk. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ub3rman123 Posted July 9, 2010 Author Share Posted July 9, 2010 What's a BIOS? I know what an OS is, and I know it stands for Boot Index Operating System, but what does it do? If the OS matters in the least, I run XP. I don't think I need an external hard drive, I don't have anything to store. Mostly I need space to use things from, i.e. games, modding. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chibievil Posted July 9, 2010 Share Posted July 9, 2010 well i think u can also use external to install stuff as well, i dont know as i havent tried it, but i do remember once when i installed a game it didnt ask where to store it and it stored onto my external, but i copyed and pasted it to my boot c program files and it worked Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Illiad86 Posted July 9, 2010 Share Posted July 9, 2010 I looked at it, there's four black sockets in a quad that have a small L shaped thing inside them. Looks like a SATA port to me. What do you mean by a 4-pin power plug? ya that's SATA :smile: The 4-pin power plug is the long plug next to it in the pictures I provided. That's good :smile: Make sure you have another one like that on the PSU or you can get one of these You'll also need to get a SATA data cable...they don't provide you with one if you buy a HDD from newegg. In regards to the BIOS: The BIOS of a PC software is built into the PC, and is the first code run by a PC when powered on ('boot firmware'). The primary function of the BIOS is to load and start an operating system. When the PC starts up, the first job for the BIOS is to initialize and identify system devices such as the video display card, keyboard and mouse, hard disk, CD/DVD drive and other hardware. The BIOS then locates software held on a peripheral device (designated as a 'boot device'), such as a hard disk or a CD, and loads and executes that software, giving it control of the PC.[3] This process is known as booting, or booting up, which is short for bootstrapping. A BIOS will also have a user interface (or UI for short). Typically this is a menu system accessed by pressing a certain key on the keyboard when the PC starts. In the BIOS UI, a user can configure hardware, set the system clock, enable or disable system components, and most importantly, select which devices are eligible to be a potential boot device and set various password prompts, most importantly a password for securing access to the BIOS UI functions itself and preventing malicious users from booting the system from unauthorized peripheral devices. The BIOS provides a small library of basic input/output functions that to operate and control the peripherals such as the keyboard, text display functions and so forth, and these software library functions are callable by external software. In the IBM PC and AT, certain peripheral cards such as hard-drive controllers and video display adapters carried their own BIOS extension ROM, which provided additional functionality. bben is right, there would probably not be a BIOS upgrade for your machine to support 2TB HDDs. It's not too necessary...lol I couldn't imagine filling up that much space :tongue: Plus, it's a pretty scary event lol flashing a BIOS especially if you don't know too much about computers. I'm in that situation myself. My motherboard is pretty old now. It takes about a minute or two to boot up now because I can't get a BIOS update. I got a new graphics card and apparently it takes the BIOS that long to recognize it's a graphics card. It's annoying but it finally picks up it's a card and no problems from there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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