Q: Can you help me about Hard Drive? cuz If I were to buy Hard Drive, then I need to think carefully and this is my first time to buy one so I need explanation about this... Check this one. http://www.amazon.com/Recorder-Multi-med... Then this. http://cgi.ebay.com/Western-Digital-Cavi... So I already bought the recorder on the top (Amazon) but it needs Hard Drive, and I can't tell if this SATA Western Digital is the right Hard Drive for it... and plus there is a reviewer on the HDD recorder (Amazon) and he said... The only drawback is that it only supports IDE hard drive with Fat32 format. I have a SATA drive and I had to buy a IDE for this player. But, besides that, it is definitly the best thing I ever bought. I kinda get confuse about it, help! Plz help. Thanks in advanced ^_^ http://www.amazon.com/Recorder-Multi-media-Player-Support-Included/dp/B0013QPZKK/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=miscellaneous&qid=1221612661&sr=8-2 http://cgi.ebay.com/Western-Digital-Caviar-GreenPower-500GB-SATA-Hard-Drive_W0QQitemZ130255245224QQihZ003QQcategoryZ158827QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem edited
A: No, that hard drive won't do. The eBay drive is SATA and uses thin data cables and you need IDE (also known as PATA) which uses the flat ribbon cables. Take a look at this article from "How Stuff Works" http://computer.howstuffworks.com/adding-a-hard-drive.htm In regards to FAT32, that is referring to what file system it was formatted with. Don't worry too much about this one because if need be, you can deal with this yourself. I'll explain: When you set up a disk to use, there are two steps to be taken before you can start using it. (These two steps used to be done using a floppy disk to run certain programs before you could use the Windows install disk but since Windows 2000, these can be done with the install disk.) The first step is to partition (or as some of us who've been doing this a long time might say, "fdisk" it) - partitioning is stating whether the entire disk is to be used as one big space or split up as though it were more than one disk. You would want one large space. The second step is to format it. Formatting is about dividing up the big space into smaller sections that will be used to put files or pieces of files - one file or one piece of a file per section. This is when FAT32 becomes relevant. There are different file systems; we started with FAT12, I think and went through FAT16 and then FAT32. Now it is quite common to use the latest, NTFS. (Each of these file systems broke the big section up into smaller and smaller sections. For the sake of argument, a 1 gb drive using FAT12 may have had 100 little sections of 10mb each but using NTFS the disk would have 1000 little sections of 1mb each. (These figures are ridiculous - I only use them because it makes it easy to understand.)) If you were to buy a disk that is formatted NTFS, you could hook it up to another computer that is using Windows 2000 or XP or Vista and format the disk. You would be asked what file system you want and you would choose FAT32. (You can't use a Windows 98 computer to do this, nor do I think ME was capable of this - they can't read NTFS disks and will tell you there is no disk there.) So if you were to see a bargain that is IDE, you could safely buy it, knowing that you can change the file system. The important thing you need to know is whether the disk needs to have any system files on it. I'd make a guess that it wouldn't but can't be sure. That would be a good question to ask the person you are buying the recorder from or look in the instructions when you get it. Just toss in another question or feel free to email me (I'm lousy at remembering to read them though, I warn you :-( ) later if you find you're having trouble when you get them both.