I Need Help Shopping!

[Dan #2]

i am now in the market for a new comp.

 

i have 250 - 750 (i have no fucking clue... a lot) cd's, and my goal is to eventually get a 160gig ipod and keep everything on both the comp and ipod, making for easy, uniform filling/managing..

 

what should i get, for a comp?

 

i need a LOT of storage (less than 300g would be laughable..) and i want something i can quickly+cleanly use itunes, photoshop, the internet, word documents and pictures on.

 

i want to watch movies, and not have it lag..

 

i have a budget of $5000, but i don't want to spend that much. at the same time, i don't want a piece of shit, though.. i want something that will last at least ten years, and not delete my music haha, any suggestions?

 

thanks for any + all help :]

[Some Random]

i imagine you can get something pretty pimpin' for half your budget, but 10 years...c'mon. do you remember what computers were like ten years ago?

 

edit: i suppose that wasn't much help, was it? my brother just ordered one of those dell xps laptop dealies. have you looked at them? they fit your budget and requirements, and, unlike me, my brother knows a thing or two about computers.

Edited February 10, 2008 by Some Random

[Dan #2]

i imagine you can get something pretty pimpin' for half your budget, but 10 years...c'mon. do you remember what computers were like ten years ago?

 

edit: i suppose that wasn't much help, was it? my brother just ordered one of those dell xps laptop dealies. have you looked at them? they fit your budget and requirements, and, unlike me, my brother knows a thing or two about computers.

oh i definitely remember computers ten years ago, but the things i do now on a computer are the only things i can imagine wanting to do on a computer. i want a scanner, and that's probably as fancy as i want to get haha, i don't care what new ipods come out if i have all the music i like anyway on an old one..

 

but as for dell i don't even want to go anywhere near them, haha. i appreciate your effort, but i wouldn't even read about one haha. in my mind, they're the computer equivalent to mentally handicapped people, and they're so fragile haha.

 

and i appreciate everything haha, assuming you're reading this, know i appreciate it aha.

[LonelyWreckage]

I sort of built mine online, using PC Options, couldn't you try that method, and just upgrade the HD's and memory to what you need ? Even if it's not PC Option, you're likely to get a better deal than with Dell.

[garsk]

so basically you want a computer with a TB hard-drive?

[Dan #2]

so basically you want a computer with a TB hard-drive?

that wouldn't be bad at all, 1024 gigs, right?

[Crusader]

don't get 1 harddrive with a giant drive. get smaller ones and combine.

 

also $5000 is going to get you a really nice computer, you could probably build a really nice one for $1200-$2000

[Dan #2]

don't get 1 harddrive with a giant drive. get smaller ones and combine.

 

also $5000 is going to get you a really nice computer, you could probably build a really nice one for $1200-$2000

do you know of anything i could read, to start out? i am not very "tech-savvy," so i'm not sure it would work..

 

 

in terms of drive size, is it possible/practical to choose say three 500 gig hardrives, and then use one for music, one for videos/programs, an the third for all other files/documents?

 

what is a large drive, and what is too large a drive? is there even such thing as a 500 gig drive, or would it be a weird, seemingly-arbitrary number, like 512 gigs, or something?

[Sparq]

Five grand would get you a supremely powerful gaming monster or a nearly bullet-proof server. You could probably do a hot-swap RAID for that.

 

$2000 will still give you a fairly high-capacity RAID storage system if your main goal is to protect a huge pile of music. Crusader's right there - one big drive is not the way to go. You'll be kicking your own ass when it fails with your whole collection a few years down the road. Big is fine, but at least two drives in a mirroring RAID is what you want. It'll also allow you to store your gargantuan data archive on one while you reformat the other with whatever OS is coming up.

 

Yes, you can use multiple drives for different purposes. I have a 250 for my OS and games, then another 250 and a 120 for general crap. Not an optimal setup, but I'm still sorting it out after moving to Vista. I used to run the pair of 250s as a RAID-1 array, which means that the same data appears on both drives. So I effectively had 500 gigs that worked like 250, but would be recoverable if one drive failed outright. you can do the same with RAID-0 (striping) which increases read/write speed but not redundancy....and then there are a whole bunch of nested array levels to chain multiple drives into one big high-speed, ulta-redundant superdrive.

 

Most drives are sold in fairly even numbers, but remember that you'll only really get about 93% of the advertized capacity as useable space. Terabyte will be effectively 900-some gigabytes.

Edited February 10, 2008 by Sparq

[Dan #2]

wicked, thanks a lot!

are there such thing as terabyte harddrives? could i get mirroring tb harddrives, and would that be a bad idea, if i did?

[Sparq]

Yep, you can get 7200 RPM Terabyte drives now for about $300 each. Mirroring them would not be a bad idea. if it were me, I'd probably use the pair of mirrored drives for file storage only, and run my OS and applications from a smaller third drive, maybe a 120 or 160 gig. Should help with your read/write speed a bit, and adds a little protection against your files becoming unreadable if a nasty virus or something hits your OS - remember that mirroring drives will mirror the bad stuff too.

Edited February 11, 2008 by Sparq

[Azalroth]

I built my computer for about 1500, its pretty kick ass right now. I just bought a 1TB (One Terabyte) drive and I plan to pick up another one some day and mirror the two. My OS (Vista) is running on an 80GB drive.

 

Check out tigerdirect.ca or ncix.com for computer parts prices, my 1TB drive came from NCIX but the rest of my computer came from TigerDirect. They have pre-built systems as well there.

 

For your own sake DO NOT SHOP AT FUTURESHOP or BESTBUY!!!!

 

That is all.

[Sparq]

For your own sake DO NOT SHOP AT FUTURESHOP or BESTBUY!!!!

They will literally poison you.

 

So you'll need a decent case and processor, hopefully a motherboard with many SATA ports for your drives, average PSU, and since it's music...an OK sound card. some RAM, but nothing insane. If this is not to be a gaming computer, then you can and will save hundreds of dollars by not having to buy one or more PCI-X performance video cards. Onboard video or a basic 3d card should be fine.

Edited February 11, 2008 by Sparq