You have an extra cable but you haven't installed a SATA hard drive
before? Makes me wonder why you have a cable then. Just because I
don't know your knowledge of the subject, the SATA cable is different
than an IDE cable. At the wiki you can see the mobo plug.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA
On the topic of OEM - I've purchased OEM before and sometimes it comes
with cables and sometimes not. Generally the listing will tell you
exactly what will come with it. It may be that you get nothing other
than the hard drive.
From here on out is based on my experience and was with Vista:
I don't know about "having" to format the hard drive, but you might as
well (imo). When you plug it in and start Windows, the OS should
recognize the new drive. You can also manage your hard drives in the
Management Console (in Vista this is accessible via right-clicking the
"My Computer" icon - maybe the same in XP?)
Kurt Anderson
Application Developer
Highsmith
-----Original Message-----
From: pctech-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:pctech-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Dan
Sent: Thursday, September 18, 2008 1:07 PM
To: PC Technical Discussion for iSeries Users
Subject: [PCTECH] OEM hard drive questions
My son is in the market for a new SATA hard drive for his PC running
WinXP SP3, which has mobo support for SATA.
I am looking at a "Barracuda 250GB 7,200RPM Serial ATA-300 Hard Drive
OEM"
for $50, which is about a $25 savings over the retail box version.
I'm guessing the OEM has only the drive, and nothing else. No cables,
CD-ROM setup, or instructions. I've got an extra cable, so that's not a
problem. But, since it's been a number of years since I've installed a
hard drive in an existing setup (and this would be the first SATA hard
drive), I am wondering what's involved in setting this up. Will the OEM
drive come formatted? WIthout setup software, how does one format and
partition new drives nowadays in WinXP? Still opening up a command
prompt and using FORMAT?
FWIW, this is not going to be a bootable drive, and is only for data
(not applications).
Any other questions I should be asking?
TIA,
Dan
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