the maximuim internal size can my computer handle ?

[mouaadable]

hi guys
i'm welling to buy a new hard drive
i got : core 2 quad 760 - q8200 with 4gb ram and 1 hard drive (250gb)
what's the maximuim ammount of capacity can i put in it
500 gb ? 1tb ? 2tb ?
and what's the most reliable hard drives ?
thank's in advance .

[Adriaanse IT]

With most modern PC's you don't have to worry about how much HDD capacity your pc can use.
You only need to check that the motherboard you have, matches the connection type (sata). Note: that sata is backwards compatible.

The thing you need to worry about more, is that if you buy a new HDD, will the PC be able to get the maximum performance out of it. Which in your case shouldn't be a problem.

But now to answer you question; the maximum capacity for a HDD that fits your PC is 4TB. About the best HDD, this is a bit difficult, are you going for performance or reliability?

[Hiroshe]

Is there a particular reason you need so much storage? - the answer to that will determine what kind of storage you should use.

Most modern PC's do not have a pratical limit to the disk size. They also usually support multiple disks.

The tree main types of storage are hard disks, solid-state disks and hybrid disks. Hard disks are more cost efficient for the ammount of space you get, but have O(n) seek time, and slower bandwidth. Solid-state disks are more expensive, but have O(1) seek time and very high bandwidth. Hybrid disks are hard disks, with a small solit-state cashe, giving a balance between the two.

Furthermore, you can use RAID systems for more advanced storage setups. There are two ways to implement RAID. One is to use multiple disks and implement it with software. Another is to get a hardware RAID system. The latter is faster and usually can support more disks.

Then there are different kinds of RAID. RAID-0 will combine the size of the disk, increase read/write performance by a factor of how many disks you have, but does not increase redundancy. RAID-1 will not increase the size of the disk, but will improve read performance by a factor of the number of disks, will not effect the write speed, and increase redundancy by a factor of the number of disks you have. Combinations of RAID-0 and RAID-1 are also possible. In RAID-5, the size of the disk is n-1, you only need any of n-1 disks to operate, the read speed is increased by a factor of n-1, the write speed is implementation specific, but if it's using caching, it's usually faster by a constant, unless it's very write intensive.

[mouaadable]

Remy 1
thank you so much , that's exactly what i'm looking for
and yes the motherboard support sata II
i took a look arround the interent it seems to me WD drives more reliable and stay much longer than seagate and others...

[mouaadable]

Hiroshe
wow that was an in depth explanation thank you So much .
and yes i need much storage because i'm a graphic designer and a vfx artist
i work with a lot of footage,sound effects , tutorials, softwares, i'm also working with a bunch of virtual machines, with multiple systems
i have a lot to do with storage .

unfortunally the computer i got doesn't suport multiple hard drives , i only got 2 sata cables from the motherboard (1 for the Hard drive , and the other for the dvd-ROM)
about the raid system i can't Afford getting it .

[Hiroshe]

Do you use your DVD-ROM? If you use it often, then keep it. If you don't, you might as well use it for a second hdd, and you can always switch it back temporarily if you need to read a cd or something.

[rubberman]

The maximum disc size depends upon (to some extent) the file system that is using it. In any case I think that 2TB is about the smallest maximum size (kind of an oxymoron that) supported. Modern partition table formats can handle larger devices (such as 3tb discs and larger RAID/LVM arrays), as can file systems such as btrfs and such for Linux. Not sure about Windows. I think NTFS may be limited (but I may be incorrect in this) to 2TB as well.

[Hiroshe]

Most modern filesystems can handle much more then 2TB. NTFS (current windows implementation, not the best representation of modern file systems) can handle 256TiB.

[mouaadable]

Hiroshe
i always use the dvd rom almost all days
to burn data and to reveal them

[mouaadable]

rubberman
thank you for the informations .

[suria.kunanathan]

maybe you can get a adding pci port if you want to add more sata ports for the hard disk

[mouaadable]

thank's suria , i'll think abot it
and For Everyone have the same question, there is a Discussion running out here:
https://www.daniweb.com/hardware-and-software/pc-hardware/threads/485946/dell-cant-handle-more-than-1-tb-hard-drive-