Windows 7 - Could someone recommend me an internal hard drive?

See attachment for motherboard model. I have a budget of $160 and I'm looking for a decent 500 GB - 1 TB internal hard drive. Another question, can I have two internal hard drives installed on my motherboard? I've read somewhere that you could, I just want some confirmation.

Thanks.

Sure, you can connect 3 internal drives as long as your motherboard has connectors for them, and it certainly should.

You could have SATA drives or traditional IDE drives. You could have connectors for both.

Best way to check is to open the case and look at the cables that connect the hard drive and the motherboard.

Is it a wide ribbed cable, probably gray or black, roughly 1.25 inches wide, kinda like a mans belt?

If so, that is IDE. Look where the motherboard end of that cable connects--should be a black plug about 1.5 inches wide. You should see more similar plugs and that is where you would connect your new drives.

If the cables from the hard drive are much narrower and not ribbed, that is SATA. Check how many of those connections you have on the motherboard. You probably have at least 4 total whether IDE or SATA.

After you know that, you can go drive shopping for $100 or less.

I found an Internet post that says your motherboard has two SATA connectors and one IDE connector.

It's up to you to visually confirm that with your own eyes. You need to find out what the unused connectors are and then buy drives that use that same type of connector--either IDE or SATA. Your existing drive could be either IDE or SATA.

Will I need a SATA controller card?

(The attachment is old, before I upgraded the processor and added a video card)

The picture shows two SATA connectors (orange) at the lower right of the image. One of them is used for a hard drive, the other is free.

If you only wish to add a single SATA hard drive, you won't need an add-on controller card.

Thanks for the reply bobkn.

I'm looking at this one right now. Any thoughts or opinions? I'll also go with this cable. Is that everything I need?

Nikolay:

You have the correct cable.

However---I spent probably 30 minutes trying to research details on your motherboard yesterday, at Acer and elsewhere. Unfortunately, documentation is not easily found and Acer does not supply a lot of detail.

I saw one reference from Acer that said the board supported hard drives up to 400 GB. If that is true, you would be limited to that size or smaller. It also appears Acer does little if anything to provide users with updated BIOSes. The notice about the 400 GB limitation also said "varies with models".

So, I personally would be very reluctant to buy a hard drive for that PC unless I could independently get confirmation of the supported drive sizes.

I also discovered yesterday that Acer customer support is pretty much hopeless, so I don't know if you will be able to confirm anything.

All I can suggest is to Google and to make a post on this forum asking if others have your motherboard and are able to use larger drives.

There is nothing wrong with the drive you chose. Personally, I would go with Western Digital, but Seagate is a respected company.

Thanks for all your help ignatzatsonic, your time is greatly appreciated. I'll make a new thread about this issue right now.

If it's any help I have recently installed Windows 7 onto an Acer Veriton M464 (which looked almost identical to your motherboard photo) and had absolutely no problem when adding a Seagate 1Tb SATA-II Barracuda drive

I'll though in my 2 cents worth as well. It is going to also be a matter of which company you prefer. I personally have had great sauces with Western Digital. Where as others may say differently. Fabe