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 W7 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

I'm trying to pick between a Western Digital and a Seagate HDD.

Newegg.com - Western Digital Caviar Green WD10EADS 1TB 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

Newegg.com - Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 ST31000528AS 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

I may also look at power supplies since I'll have around 50 bucks left. If you know of any good ones, please let me know.

I tend to go for WD in 2.5" format... and Seagates in 3.5" guise, not least because WD tend to be slightly quieter in notebooks, and Seagate offer a better and longer form of warranty on desktop drives.

Both outfits have good and bad models. Read reviews always, thus ensuring you stay away from any models with problematic issues in either firmware or physical respects.

Nikolay:

I have the 1.5 TB version of the WD drive and have no complaints at all.

It is in the "green" series, which means it spins a bit slower and will save you $2 or $3 dollars a year in power costs.

Without looking at benchmarks, I would guess the Seagate is the faster drive because it spins at 7200 rpm.

However--the WD should have 2 500 gig platters in it, which contributes to its speed. The WD is likely to be as fast or faster than most 7200 rpm drive were a year or two ago.

If you want the fastest WD drive, go with the "caviar black" series.

In the real world, either of these drives will do very well and you likely would never know the WD spins more slowly if you didn't know.

If you aren't buying till Feb, prices will fall even further.

Here are some good buys: Deals2buy: Storage Devices deals

Hi- Nikolay, first check to see if your motherboard supports the total entity of collaborated disk space. next check with the proper connectors ( you may not have enough connectors in some pcs for more then 2 HDD's)

Western Digital and Seagate are my preffered options.