What SATA for a 2005 PMG5?

[davidg4781]

I have a 2005 PMG5 DC. Last time I used it it was giving me issues that made me think it was HDD related (don’t ask, it’s been a couple years and it’s been packed away since the).

At the time, I remember reading to get a certain version of SATA and stay away from another, but can’t remember which and can’t find the information now.

Can anyone help me out? I’d rather go with Western Digital, just because of past experiences.

Also would an SSD be beneficial for anything? I’m going to use it to import footage from a VCR.

 

[eyoungren]

SATA 1.

SATA 2 drives are possible and you can get SATA 3 to jumper down if you use a WD drive. I've got a Western Digital 4TB HD as a secondary drive in my Quad. Had to jumper it down to SATA 1 before the system recognized it.

 

[davidg4781]

Thanks. So go with a WD SATA 3? I remembered it was SATA I but also remembered to stay away from II or III... just couldn't remember which.

I'll probably go with a WD Black 1TB, $70 on Amazon. That should be plenty of storage for my needs right now. If anything changes I can add in a larger one.

Now I just need to figure out how to get internet to it. I'm going to work on this in the living room and there are no access points near it. But that's for a different thread, or research on my own.

 

[eyoungren]

Thanks. So go with a WD SATA 3? I remembered it was SATA I but also remembered to stay away from II or III... just couldn't remember which.

Yes, WD SATA III would be fine.

Just remember to jumper it down. Otherwise the system will not see it. You can Google how to do that, it's out there and easy to find.

 

[ziggy29]

Thanks. So go with a WD SATA 3? I remembered it was SATA I but also remembered to stay away from II or III... just couldn't remember which.

I'll probably go with a WD Black 1TB, $70 on Amazon. That should be plenty of storage for my needs right now. If anything changes I can add in a larger one.

They should all work -- as mentioned, you may need to set jumpers appropriately, but beyond that it's a backward-compatible technology. Certainly SATA-3 is so ubiquitous now that it's probably a lot cheaper (and new stock) so I'd go that route, plus it's more useful if you move that drive to another (newer) machine in the future.

An SSD might help a little in terms of transfer times, but I don't think it's worth the extra cost for your use on this machine since bus speed will limit the SSD's performance gains. A 1 TB SSD is something like $325-350 now, I think. Maybe it's overkill, but this sounds like a situation where a RAID-0 setup of two cheap HDDs might work well AND provide some redundancy to protect from data loss.