Kush Posted April 19, 2001 Report Posted April 19, 2001 Okay, I'm in a situation, and I need strong computer advice fast.I have exactly enough money to get eithera) a new CD-R 8x4x32OR a new 60 gig hard drive. (7200)I can only get one. Not both. Ultimately I just need more space, I could move files onto different CDroms or just get one huge drive.There are down sides and up sides for each choice. What would you do if you were in my shoes?
Parias Posted April 19, 2001 Report Posted April 19, 2001 Bigger HD. The prime rule of gaming: You can NEVER have enough HD space.When I got my 40 gigger, I thought it'd take me at least a year to fill it up. I've been sitting at 5 gigs for the past few months....
aramike Posted April 19, 2001 Report Posted April 19, 2001 What do you use your system for? Do you use more than one computer?CDRs are nice for data transfer between two computers (assuming both can read CDRW media). However, if you're just using one computer, go with the bigger HD.
Kush Posted April 19, 2001 Author Report Posted April 19, 2001 AramikeI have a desktop and a laptop. I exchange files bewteen the two all the time.I could use both for work and for pleasure.For work I generate very large files. I have worked out a way to break them down and save them on zip disks. But saving to a cd would be great.Or I could just get a massive drive and create a couple of giant partitions for back ups.SCI thought about that! I could just go IDE, and get both and be happy, but I love my SCSI! It's as expensive as hell, but it's fast, solid, and I've hear rumours about 60 gig IDE HD's overheating alot. This could just be bad press put out by Adaptec to mess with the competition, but it got me concerned.Anybody have any problem with the bigger IDE drives? Should I be concerned?
aramike Posted April 19, 2001 Report Posted April 19, 2001 Kush: if you're doing a lot of sync'ing, then get a USB CDR that you could use for both of your 'puters.
Guest Posted April 19, 2001 Report Posted April 19, 2001 I have never had a problem with the bigger IDE hard drives, except for IBM, those things drivers are nonexistent.I would go for a good 40 gig or higher Western Digital, that's all I've got in my machine is W/D, I swear by them, and an IDE CDR to go with it and you have the best of both. I have never been all that impressed with scsi, especially considering the high speed of IDE's now. Just my opinion...
Kush Posted April 19, 2001 Author Report Posted April 19, 2001 Hmmmm USB CDR. Interesting. Not a bad idea at all.And Jag, I think the SCSI/IDE debate comes down to what you have to do. If your basically shovelling around text and code all day long, IDE is fine. If you work with alot of video and music files, SCSI is... correction... Firewire is the way to go. If I could afford Firewire, hoo doggy, I'd have... a better paying job and no life.
Eclipse Posted April 19, 2001 Report Posted April 19, 2001 I'd get the CDR quote:Posted by SC: Shop smart and you can afford both. No pun intended?
Gordon Posted April 19, 2001 Report Posted April 19, 2001 Hey Kush, What's your budget, because I also agree with SC you can get both if you do your homework. I bought a 12x10x32 Iomega Zip CD at CompUSA about 4 months ago and paid $110.00 after instant and mail-in rebates. You can get the same type of deals on HD's. So if your budget is $200 - $250 I would definately say you can get both.
Kush Posted April 19, 2001 Author Report Posted April 19, 2001 Sure, I've got $250... Canadian!(I'm guessing that's about $130 American)Trust me, I've done the hunting around. I've gone to every shop, I've looked up every price I could find on the net and to get a SCSI HD or CD-R is going to cost me. That's the price I am willing to pay for wanting that little bit of extra speed. (I checked out USB stats and it's just not as fast as SCSI) I've been struggling with this one for a while and all I need is to tally up how many people go:"You nut bar! Go for the HD!"or"You lamer! CD-R is the way to go!"The most votes win.(I am also counting the votes who say "SCSI's for Apple-wanna-be's. Real men go IDE!" or "Get off your fat butt, bite the financial bullet and go for both you... you 'Dawson Creek' watching, N'Sync loving, 'Why can't Gerri get along with the other Spice girls?' wussy man!!!")
Gallion Posted April 19, 2001 Report Posted April 19, 2001 Get whatever you want Kush. No experience with SCSI, plenty with IDE. SCSI = mega $$ (greenbacks or Loons). IDE be cheaper and performance be on par if not better than SCSI in my research.But if push comes to shove - get the HDD TTFN
Guest Posted April 19, 2001 Report Posted April 19, 2001 quote: When I got my 40 gigger, I thought it'd take me at least a year to fill it up. I've been sitting at 5 gigs for the past few months.... And Parias is a gamer extrodinaire, he just won't get rid of some of those puppies, I have over 22 gig on my drives, and I still have over 15gig free. I still say go with the high speed IDE, and get both, I love my CDR, and couldn't live without it now!! And the fact is E-bay has some real killer deals, and a lot of the other auction sites do too. My bro in law put together his Athlon 1.2 gig with everything, and I do mean everything, for less then $750.00. And all top of the line!!!
Guest Posted April 20, 2001 Report Posted April 20, 2001 easy, buy the hard disk and then buy an older CD-R. I bought a 40 gig hard drive for about 200 bucks, and I could see old CD-R's (2X, 4X) being sold for 85 bucks.If you an really afford only one, then what are your needs? backup purposes or just need more space? With a CDR you can put all your non-needed files (MP3's, avi's,docs,Wavs, etc) into a CD and almost literally empty your HD.On the other hand, 40 gigs could do the trick too. Though a CD-R has more uses imo.
Soback Posted April 20, 2001 Report Posted April 20, 2001 http://www.upgradesource.com/ Check it out, see if you like anything.
Epsilon 5 Posted April 20, 2001 Report Posted April 20, 2001 A HD is the best thing.Western digital? Nah. Buy a Maxtor, they are much better. cost a bit more, but they never fail at their job.I have a friend who took FOUR MONTHS to fill a 40 gig drive... 25 gigs of games, 5 gigs of mp3, 8 gigs of misc programs... 2 free.He also have a Acer CD-RW that don't work... dammit...
Supreme Cmdr Posted April 21, 2001 Report Posted April 21, 2001 quote:I bought a 40 gig hard drive for about 200 bucks...they must've seen you coming.I recently got another IBM DTLA 30GB ATA100 drive for $129.You can pick up a top of the line Plextor CDR for about $150.The SCSI vs EIDE speeds are negligible to the extent that only purists, the uninformed and those without extra IDE channels (or lackof EIDE support), bother with SCSI these days.
Steve Schacher Posted April 30, 2001 Report Posted April 30, 2001 Does anyone have any opinions on the Plextor Plexwriter 16/10/40A (lowest price $198) vs. the Yamaha CRW 2100EZ (lowest price $185)?After my last scare, this will be my next purchase.
Kush Posted May 4, 2001 Author Report Posted May 4, 2001 Plextor is a stellar name. I have never heard anything but praise. If you can afford it, go Plextor.A friend of mine who works at a hospital told me a horror story about how they bought a bunch of Yamaha CDRs and in six months each of them had failed. This could be useful information or not. I've been cautious about recommending them.And for those who care, I went for the CDR. I did some soul searching, and soon realised that my real problem was not hard drive space, (I've got plenty for my needs) but back up media; Zip had its day in the sun, and now it is the weakest link... GOODBYE!Spent $200 cnd ($120 am?) on a 12x8x32 IDE drive. Anyone heard of LG? Anyhoo, thanks for the advice. Now it's back to Dawson Creek. (I can't believe it took Joey that long to tell Dawson she slept with Pacey!)My next question will be right after BCM is released."Should I spring for a Geforce 3 or stay with my Voodoo and suffer."Next on Oprah.
Epsilon 5 Posted May 4, 2001 Report Posted May 4, 2001 1$CAN = .66$US 1$US = 1.5$CANThese are approximates.200 canadian makes 132 us
Soback Posted May 4, 2001 Report Posted May 4, 2001 I would say stay with voodoo right now,(why spend money on a 3d card if yours is still good), not sure if the graphics would be much better just because of a different card, later on though, when you need more 3d memory, then upgrade.
Akira Posted May 8, 2001 Report Posted May 8, 2001 Steve, according to MaximumPC the Plextor is king of the hill and the Yamaha had less than good performance.Kush... If you're still wasting money on SCSI for video work, you're throwing green at the wind.I do post on mac's and pc's. I convinced the boss to switch to IDE when Maxtor's 7200 rpm diamond max plus drives hit 40gb. Haven't changed since. IDE Raid with a 0+1 (two striped arrays, one as a mirror) provides me with so much bandwidth it isn't funny.The only SCSI hd that's come close to the throughput of my single 75GB Desstar 75gxp drive was a Seagate Cheata at 15k rpm. That drive was fast, but for the same price, I could have trippled my storage space and had 4x the sustained transfer in a raid array.SCSI is only necessary when you need arrays larger than 4 drives.Firewire... heh! don't get me started. It's yet to show anything near it's 400mbit throughput. If you want something fast that's external to your system then think Fibre Channel.Anyway, off to kick the boss for buying single proc. g4's instead of the duals
Guest Posted May 8, 2001 Report Posted May 8, 2001 Lol.Oprah says: Wait till December 2001 to buy a new vid card.Why? Buying a GEFORCE3 now would be good, but you would be buying the "1st generation" of those cards...at a time when little or no software is or will be written to take advantage of it.Nvidia is releasing the GEFORCE 3 with NV20 (I think) stuff... around december the 2nd gen GEFORCE will use NV25 system... which is the same card but MUCH more efficient. And by then the prices may be a bit lower (or at worse, the same as they would be if you had bought the card now), software will be out that uses the new NV25 and DX8 to its fullest.So the fat lady says, buy later, get a higher performing card for the same price at a time when the software actually USES the card's features.
Guest Apollyon Posted May 8, 2001 Report Posted May 8, 2001 About the whole price going down on the Geforce3 thing. I wouldn't be holding my breath for that. I bought my Geforce DDR/DVI (That's first gen GPU) about a year ago and the price has dropped an astounding... 10 BUCKS (amer) since I last checked. I'm happy with my purchase!! Hehe, though I still wish I had a Geforce 2 Ultra, mmmmmm framerate! Who knows though, maybe the $500 price tag on the Geforce 3 will drop faster.
Kush Posted May 8, 2001 Author Report Posted May 8, 2001 Gee I guess I've been told. As you can tell, I'm surrounded by a few Mac heads who want to turn me over to the dark side with their talk of Firewire and 400mbit! And Tac... there's one game that's hopefully (really REALLY hopefully) will be out soon that takes advantage of Dx8. It's a little game I like to call BATTLECRUISER MILLENNIUM!I was at a friends place, he has a 21 inch monitor. I pulled up the screenshots page on his computer, Man ALIVE! A Gforce card, combined with a huge monitor really makes the game look stellar. There's no way I will ever EVER be able to convince my wife that we can afford to upgrade my monitor and video card, let alone spend $500 am (I don't even want to think about what it will cost here in Canada!) on a video card alone.I never thought the day would come when my 3dfx card and my 17inch would make me feel inadequate.er... 17inch monitor.[ 05-08-2001: Message edited by: Kush ]
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