hard drives

[Stewart]

I have a desk top running XP at present and intend to upgrade to Windows 7
fairly soon.
I shall buy an extra 1gb of DDR1 ram giving me total of 2gb.
My present maxtor hard drive is only 160gb and I want to change it to a
500gb hard drive.
My power unit is a Hiper 425watt and is very quiet running.
Should I remove the exisitng hard drive and replace or could I keep both,
running the new one with Windows7 and the old with XP.
I am just a bit doubtful if there is enough power in the hiper unit.
What I wish to know is, does a hard drive run whether it is being used or
not? If it does not then having both hard drives would probably be OK
Thank you

 

[a]

I have a desk top running XP at present and intend to upgrade to Windows 7
fairly soon.
I shall buy an extra 1gb of DDR1 ram giving me total of 2gb.
My present maxtor hard drive is only 160gb and I want to change it to a
500gb hard drive.
My power unit is a Hiper 425watt and is very quiet running.
Should I remove the exisitng hard drive and replace or could I keep both,
running the new one with Windows7 and the old with XP.
I am just a bit doubtful if there is enough power in the hiper unit.
What I wish to know is, does a hard drive run whether it is being used or
not? If it does not then having both hard drives would probably be OK
Thank you

I have the Nexus 430 watt power supply and I have no problems running
2 drives--the power required by a second drive is not that high. The
more important question is how much power your video card requires--if
its not that high, you shouldn't have any problems.

I have XP on a Western Digital 1 terabyte drive and I put in a Western
Digital 160 gb drive to try out Windows 7. I use the BIOS first hard
drive to boot from option to switch between operating systems. So far
I'm not sufficiently impressed with W7 to use it as my main operating
system. I see it as more of the same crap dressed up and warmed over.

 

[Slap]

So far
I'm not sufficiently impressed with W7 to use it as my main operating
system. I see it as more of the same crap dressed up and warmed over.

Oh dear. Win 7 isn't even close to XP. It's the stuff you can't see (many
of course can) that counts. Best to toss the old antique XP op system or
maybe keep it around for those 'older' programs you like to run. That's
about all it's good for now. Had it's day a long, long time ago.

Time for a modern op system.
--

 

[Char Jackson]

I have a desk top running XP at present and intend to upgrade to Windows 7
fairly soon.
I shall buy an extra 1gb of DDR1 ram giving me total of 2gb.
My present maxtor hard drive is only 160gb and I want to change it to a
500gb hard drive.
My power unit is a Hiper 425watt and is very quiet running.
Should I remove the exisitng hard drive and replace or could I keep both,
running the new one with Windows7 and the old with XP.
I am just a bit doubtful if there is enough power in the hiper unit.

As others have said, it depends more on what else is in the system.
Video cards and RAM are the biggest users of power. The drives don't
use much, relatively speaking.

About 10 years ago one of my systems was a Pentium 150 with a 200 Watt
power supply. That system happily powered two hard drives for years.
My current system has a 550 Watt p/s and powers 7 hard drives.

What I wish to know is, does a hard drive run whether it is being used or
not? If it does not then having both hard drives would probably be OK

It depends on your Windows power settings. You can configure your
drives to spin down after a certain amount of inactivity or allow them
to keep running full time.

If it were me, I would install both drives. You will likely be fine
unless you have a very high end graphics card, for example.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

I have a desk top running XP at present and intend to upgrade to Windows 7
fairly soon.

Bear in mind that an upgrade from XP to Windows 7 is *not* possible.
Although you can use the Upgrade version, you will need to do a clean
installation.

I shall buy an extra 1gb of DDR1 ram giving me total of 2gb.

Good. Almost everyone should have at least that much.

My present maxtor hard drive is only 160gb and I want to change it to a
500gb hard drive.

160GB may or may not be enough for you, but I certainly wouldn't
replace it. Rather *add* the 500GB drive.

My power unit is a Hiper 425watt and is very quiet running.
Should I remove the exisitng hard drive and replace or could I keep both,

You can certainly keep both and you almost certainly should. There's
no sense in discarding a good existing drive. Even if you don't need
that 660GB of disk space now, you likely will in the future.

running the new one with Windows7 and the old with XP.

You can keep both drives and use both for storage under Windows 7.
There's no need to run two operating systems.

I'm not a fan of dual-boot computers, but there certainly are some
people for whom it makes sense. But I haven't read anything in your
message that suggests that you are one of those people.

I am just a bit doubtful if there is enough power in the hiper unit.

425 watts? You didn't say anything about what other hardware is in the
case, but I very much doubt that adding a second drive would cause a
power problem for you. *Many* people run two drive systems with
substantially less than 425 watts.

What I wish to know is, does a hard drive run whether it is being used or
not?

It spins, yes.

If it does not then having both hard drives would probably be OK

As I said, it almost certainly will be OK anyway.

 

[Stewart]

Thank you all; I have windows 7 on my laptop and like it. The greatest
benefit of having the desktop using 7 as well would be to enable me to have
a home network and so work on files in either computer. I have been using a
sync program to save files and folders on the laptop but it does not delete
the ones that become redundant whereas file sharing would do this.
I think my drive to the hard drive is IDE and the graphics is included in my
Gigabyte GA-7N400-L motherboard.
The cost of a hard drive and extra ram is not significant so I shall go
ahead and keep the 2 drives; as someone said I shall have to do a clean
install of windows 7 on the new disk anyway.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Thank you all; I have windows 7 on my laptop and like it. The greatest
benefit of having the desktop using 7 as well would be to enable me to have
a home network and so work on files in either computer.

No need to go to Windows 7 for that. Windows XP and Windows 7 can
exist and communicate on the same network. Just make sure it's a
workgroup, not a homegroup.

I have been using a
sync program to save files and folders on the laptop but it does not delete
the ones that become redundant whereas file sharing would do this.
I think my drive to the hard drive is IDE and the graphics is included in my
Gigabyte GA-7N400-L motherboard.
The cost of a hard drive and extra ram is not significant so I shall go
ahead and keep the 2 drives; as someone said I shall have to do a clean
install of windows 7 on the new disk anyway.

 

[Stewart]

I have just realised that my graphics card is a NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200; that
should be powerful enough for windows 7 home premium.

 

[Stewart]

Thanks for that, maybe I would be just as well buying a completely new
desktop however my one has 2 dvd drive bays, additional sound cards, tv in
card, firewire, quiet fan and more. That is why I thought I could upgrade
it, especially as I already have a windows7 32 bit software disk.

 

[John McGaw]

I have a desk top running XP at present and intend to upgrade to Windows 7
fairly soon.
I shall buy an extra 1gb of DDR1 ram giving me total of 2gb.
My present maxtor hard drive is only 160gb and I want to change it to a
500gb hard drive.
My power unit is a Hiper 425watt and is very quiet running.
Should I remove the exisitng hard drive and replace or could I keep both,
running the new one with Windows7 and the old with XP.
I am just a bit doubtful if there is enough power in the hiper unit.
What I wish to know is, does a hard drive run whether it is being used or
not? If it does not then having both hard drives would probably be OK
Thank you

If the system operates stably with the present 425W supply then I'd think
it would work fine with 1gB of added RAM and an extra HD. Typically the RAM
might consume 5W (at most) and the HD might consume 20W (at most). If the
extra 25W of load causes problems then your PS is probably already
underpowered.

As for always running, you can set the power-saving function in the
operating system to spin-down drives after some period of inactivity. I
don't do it since I don't like the drives starting and stopping repeatedly
but YMMV.

 

[Joel]

Thanks for that, maybe I would be just as well buying a completely new
desktop however my one has 2 dvd drive bays, additional sound cards, tv in
card, firewire, quiet fan and more. That is why I thought I could upgrade
it, especially as I already have a windows7 32 bit software disk.

You can. Even if your video card doesn't run Aero (or run it well),
7 will run without Aero, just fine.

 

[Stewart]

Sorry to laboiur this but another question arises:-
I know I can add 1 gb RAM and maybe even 2 GB. 3 is the max thaat the
computer will take.
If I put in this extra RAM then is that likely to reduce the need for a new
graphics card - doing it this way I can take it one stage at a time.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Sorry to laboiur this but another question arises:-
I know I can add 1 gb RAM and maybe even 2 GB. 3 is the max thaat the
computer will take.

If you say 3GB is the max, OK, but that's a pretty unusual number to
be a maximum.

If I put in this extra RAM then is that likely to reduce the need for a new
graphics card

No. One has nothing to do with the other.

Why do you think you have a need for a new graphics card?

 

[Char Jackson]

If you say 3GB is the max, OK, but that's a pretty unusual number to
be a maximum.

It wasn't uncommon for awhile to see motherboards with 3 DIMM slots. I
don't see them much anymore.

No. One has nothing to do with the other.

Why do you think you have a need for a new graphics card?

Alias floated that idea a bit earlier in the thread, but I see nothing
to indicate that a new graphics card is needed.

 

[Stewart]

There are 4 slots but when I look at Belerac advisor it lists 2 in use (each
512 MB) and one empty. If I run the Crucial test then it likewise seems to
indicate that I can only have 3GB in total. I am not bothered about 3 or 4,
I know there are 4 slots and can try using them all if needed.
Someone suggested that I would need a better graphics card to run Window7
aero and then that brought up the question of my power unit - only 420 watts
but it is a good one and very quiet.
I am in the fortunate position that I can "play" around and if things don't
work then I shall just buy a new desktop. My new laptop works Windows7
great and can operate all my ancillaries including my Epson Perfection Photo
scanner.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

There are 4 slots but when I look at Belerac advisor it lists 2 in use (each
512 MB) and one empty. If I run the Crucial test then it likewise seems to
indicate that I can only have 3GB in total. I am not bothered about 3 or 4,
I know there are 4 slots and can try using them all if needed.

Bear two things in mind:

1. Even 3GB is more than most people need for their applications, and
going above that may not provide any discernable performance
improvement.

2. Even if you had 4GB, you couldn't use much more than 3GB of it.
Here's the scoop:

All 32-bit client versions of Windows (not just Vista/XP/7) have a 4GB
address space (64-bit versions can use much more). That's the
theoretical upper limit beyond which you can not go.

But you can't use the entire 4GB of address space. Even though you
have a 4GB address space, you can only use *around* 3.1GB of RAM.
That's because some of that space is used by hardware and is not
available to the operating system and applications. The amount you can
use varies, depending on what hardware you have installed, but can
range from as little as 2GB to as much as 3.5GB. It's usually around
3.1GB.

Note that the hardware is using the address *space*, not the actual
RAM itself. If you have a greater amount of RAM, the rest of the RAM
goes unused because there is no address space to map it to.

Someone suggested that I would need a better graphics card to run Window7
aero

I don't know what your graphics card is, but even if the above is true
(and my guess is that it's not true), aero is essentially just window
dressing. I wouldn't worry about it a whole lot.

and then that brought up the question of my power unit - only 420 watts
but it is a good one and very quiet.

You say "*only* 420 watts," but that's more power than most people
have or need. As I think I said earlier, it's highly unlikely that you
need any more.

I am in the fortunate position that I can "play" around and if things don't
work then I shall just buy a new desktop. My new laptop works Windows7
great and can operate all my ancillaries including my Epson Perfection Photo
scanner.

You say you're going to Windows 7. I don't know whether a Windows 7
driver exists for your scanner, but you should check at the Epson web
site and find out.

 

[Stewart]

Thanks for all the advice.
I had been waiting to get my new laptop with Windows7 before deciding what
to do with the desktop. I now have the laptop and it runs everything I need
so I know that I shall be able to run both my Epson scanner and printer with
the desktop.
The only problem the upgrade examination from Microsoft found was with my
sound card but that will probably just need a new driver.
I am going to Edinburgh to-morrow to buy the bits I need.
Thanks again.

On Sun, 7 Mar 2010 08:33:05 -0000, "Stewart"

<snip>
<snip>

 

[Drew]

AAhh yes and there goes Numbnuts with his same old BULLSHIT!!!

 

[DanS]

If the system operates stably with the present 425W supply then I'd
think it would work fine with 1gB of added RAM and an extra HD.
Typically the RAM might consume 5W (at most) and the HD might consume
20W (at most). If the extra 25W of load causes problems then your PS
is probably already underpowered.

Here's some actual numbers for a HD......

(http://www.gamingshogun.com/Article/3623/Western_Digital_Caviar_Black_
1TB_Hard_Drive_Review.html)

"The Caviar Black draws approximately 8.4 watts of power when performing
read and write operations while pulling 7.8 watts while idling. In
contrast, the Caviar Green line pulls 7.4 watts during read and write
operations and only 4 watts while idling. In terms of standby and sleep
modes, each drive is about 1 watt, with the Caviar Green taking a slight
lead drawing 0.98 watts. This is still better than Segate's Barracuda
7200.11, which requires 11.6 watts while performing reading and writing
operations and a not so eco-friendly 8 watts while simply idling.

A note I'd like to add though, there is a significant inrush of current
when the HD is first turned on, and when it needs to spin up from a
'sleep' state. Far above 8 watts.

 

[alt.windows7.general]

And the top posting fanboi just has to spew insults instead of addressing
the issues. Everyone act surprised.

Here ya go Numbnuts!! Is this better?