New HTPC

[hansolo77]

Hey everybody.

First off, I hope Tom approves this message. I know it's not directly associated with GameEx, but I do intend on using it with this. I just think this is the greatest forum in the world, with everybody so willing to help each other out. Thats one of the reasons I still come here! Anyway..

I've hit an snag in my PC, and feel it's time to upgrade. My computer was great until I bough Vista, now it's anything but. I posted a thread over at TGB looking for some suggestions, and I'd like to hear from my good friends here as well. If anybody has any suggestions or ideas for me, I'd love to hear them. Basically I'm looking for something fast, but stable. I'm sick of trying to watch Simpsons and having the computer crash before the first commercial break. I've already bought my new case and power supply. I just need suggestions of Mobo's, Processor's, and Video Cards. I'm thinking I might drop ATI cards and try out nVidia. I've been with ATI forever, but their Vista drivers are just laughable. Unless somebody has had good success with a new ATI card, and could recommend it over the one I currently have.

All the specs and details so far are posted over at TGB. Please feel free to reply either here or there.

Thanks again guys! Ya'll rock!

[Nologic]

Well I'm sort of an AMD fanboy...but I'd have to suggest going with Intel at this point since the chips are use less energy...thus produce less heat...which in turn requires a lesser of a fan to keep cool. Dual core I feel is a must for a HTPC...mainly seeing that you have two tuner cards...however you may...want to look at the quad cores as intel has a decent price on those...but I have a hard time seeing you ever hit the forth core...but I could see from time to time hitting the third.

Motherboard...whatever tickles your fancy from Asus or Abit as I've never had an issue with those...well other than ones I caused my self.

Ram...really any good name brand...and what ever will plug into your motherboard...just don't go cheap on the ram...I'm not saying buy a boat load of it, just don't buy the cheapest stuff out there...most issues I've seen on systems that weren't software related could be ether be traced back to piss poor cooling or cheap ram.

video...I'd just use a good nvidia onboard...unless you intend to run the new PS2 emu on the system...but if you do go this route make sure you still have a PCI-e slot for future video if the need should arise.

[fattmarrell]

I was in your position and just rebuild my system. Here's what I went for:

cpu: e4300 core2duo ($119)

mobo: asus p5b deluxe (I got the deluxe for future sli, maybe) ($200)

ram: 2gig's Crucial Ballistix pc6400 ($139)

video: bfg tech 7600gt oc pci-e ($99)

I reused my raptor drives, my case and power supply

This cpu ROCKS, paired with a good set or ram and mobo I am safely running this 1.8ghz cpu at 3.35ghz on air cooling! I did however invest in a $70 heatsink, the thermalright ultra 120 extreme. My idle temps are around 35c, full load running prime95 torture test is around 65-68c, so I'm still safe.

The intel dual core systems outperform any amd cpu at that price range. This summer the core2duo's are supposed to drop even more, and the new penryn chips comming out are even more of a powerhouse.

e4300 ftw

[stephenp1983]

Right now the core 2 duos are definately the way to go. If you decide to go with ati let me know as I have an accommodation site where you can get alot of their cards for 50 percent off. Got it from working at bestbuy.

For components any of the dual cores will be plenty to run a htpc. I have one running a amd 4200 x2 that dual boots to xp and vista. I'd get anywhere from 1-2 gbs of ram probably 2 if your going to be doing any encoding etc.

[hansolo77]

Thanks for the fast responses! I originally had an AMD Sempron 2600+ back in MCE2005 days. It worked fine. Then when I got Vista, it suddenly began to seem very slow. I upgraded the CPU to an AMD Athlon64 3200+ about 3 months ago, but still haven't really increased the speed much. I've definitely been considering an Intel Dual Core for a while, though I haven't really figured out the comparable differences. My local shop has an AMD FX2 6000+ chip for like $500 bucks. They also have Intel Quad Core's for like $900. That's a bit TOO pricey for me. I know the higher the price, and the greater the model number, the more speed you'll get. It's just finding a happy medium.

As for going ATI vs. nVidia.. I'm really not picky here. As I've said, I'm very ATI / AMD happy since that's what I've always used. The problem is, ATI's drivers just don't seem to be adequate yet. I'm hoping there's a card out there that WORKS with Vista nicely enough to have MCE run with it, and still be able to play some games. I'm not really interested in running anything critically high end.. Anything within the last 2 years is more than what I'm looking at. Games from Quake 3 era perhaps at most. I'd like to take my Star Wars Galaxies to the big screen. As for emulators, it'd be nice to have the latest/greatest, but I've gotta be a little money conscious. Running a PS2 emulator or being able to play CarnEvil on MAME isn't necessary. Like I said, I got a gaming PC already. I'd just really like to be able to watch TV and movies, and play some games that aren't going to drive my system to the max. Are SLI / Crossfire setups really necessary in this situation? Does a setup like that require 2 identical cards, like RAID drives? Some of these cards can get up to $700+ bucks.

As far as RAM is concerned... believe me, I know a good stick from a bad stick. I've bought that cheap stuff before, like Centon (or whatever it is) and the stuff just doesn't work. I'll never pay $29.99 for 1gb (2x512mb) RAM again. My current machine has 2gb (2x1gb) Corsair and I love that brand. Kingston used to be good, but they've dropped in price so much I doubt they're worth the PCB's they soldered to now. I've also tried these guys called "A-Data". They're pretty decent. I think Patriot is about as good as Centon is. The one guys I haven't tried yet is that OCZ or whatever they're called. I see their popup adds all over the web. But I fear their over advertising. Kinda like movies. They put so much into marketing, and the product sucks.

For Mobo's, I think this is really going to depend on the processor. I'd like to have one with a passively cooled southbridge to keep noise down, but it's not too important. The current Mobo I have is very lacking in ability. I really want one that has S3 standby so I can kill the machine when I'm not using it, rather than having it run at full power 24/7. I'd also like to see some firewire capabilities on board itself and not just the back, so I can attach my case front's port. It also has to have at least 3 USB headers, and at least 2 more in the back. RAM slots would prefer to be 4 but 2 is ok. RAID options are nice, but not particularly necessary. Oh, but it does have to have at least 3 PCI slots.

[Nologic]

Well SLI\Crossfire isn't really an option with it playing on a TV...as rez's don't go high enough to warrant that kind of rendering power.

Quad $485

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16819115017

Hehe not pushing the quad idea, just making it known it can be had for much less.

Motherboards - asus

http://usa.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=3&l2=11

[hansolo77]

I'm kinda thinking about going Intel Dual Core E6600 with this Mobo: http://usa.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=3&amp...amp;modelmenu=1

Reviews look good, but I'm open to ideas!

[Nologic]

Looks like a fine pick....go for it.

[one2three]

I'm kinda thinking about going Intel Dual Core E6600 with this Mobo: http://usa.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=3&amp...amp;modelmenu=1

Reviews look good, but I'm open to ideas!

I upgraded my Cab pc a few months back and chose the Asus P5B and core 2 duo E6400. Very impressed with performance. I'm not heavy into computing, mainly use it for Mame and other emus as well as PC games, but haven't had a single problem.

Always liked Asus and never had any issues with their MBs. My office pc has an Intel board with a P4 for 5+ years running 85% of the time with no problems so you may consider if you chose to stray from the Asus.

I also opted for the eVGA GeForce 7600GS. Happy with that as well.

If you're looking to save some $ and still want good performance, then I suggest going with the choices you mentioned.

Just my opinion for what it's worth ($.02 +or-) Good luck and enjoy!

[Will]

Core 2 duo is overkill for most emulation. I use an Athlon 64 3500+ without a single hiccup on anything. For a HTPC though it is perfect. I haven't kept up with the models too much since I bought my laptop (C2D 2.00 Ghz) but read reviews to find out which model is most overclockable. You might not care now, but when performance starts to seem less impressive you can jack it up a few Ghz and stave off an upgrade for a while.

Quad core (unless daddy's paying) is not worth it. For a server, YES. For personal computers, only in benchmarks. You'll get better performance increases spending extra money on better RAM, harddrives, etc, rather than a two more cores. One day this will change, but for the next few years...

If it's going to be on 24/7 look into a power efficient power supply with active PFC and an efficiency rating of 80%+.

Also, if you are going for a traditional case take a look at the Antec Nine Hundred Gaming case. It has MASSIVE cooling for when you do the overclocking, and looks good too. It is also pretty quiet on the low settings. It has a 200mm fan and three 120mm ones. Jeez.

Also, be sure to buy a motherboard with more than 2 SATA connectors

[hansolo77]

@ Will: Thanks for your advise. I've already bought the case, that was what I did yesterday. I went with the Zalman HD150 Home Theatre case. I knew I needed something that could hand a full size ATX Mobo and Power Supply. As for the Power Supply, I went with the Antec TruePower Trio 650w. It has active PFC and efficiency rating of 85%. The only thing I don't like about this power supply is the fact the cables are integrated, not modular. Not a huge problem, but still makes for a more crowded environment.

@ one2three: Are you running Vista and it's Media Center with this setup? How stable is it? Are you able to do things like power off the system or put it in standby, and still have it wake up to record shows?

[stephenp1983]

Let me know if you end up going with an ati card and I'll give you the discount site. You might just want it for a tv turner card

[hansolo77]

I may decide to actually go with this motherboard. I've had a little bit more time today to actually research a bit more. My deciding factor will be cost vs. functionality. The first Mobo I was going to grab I found on another forum as being very stable. This new Mobo however, is not only stable, but also features some additional things an HTPC user could find useful. Another thing that I like about this Mobo is the fact that the PCI slots aren't as close to the primary PCIe-x16 slot. I think this is important because the video card I may ultimately choose might be double width to support better cooling. With a PCI slot right next to the PCIe, that might make that slot useless. Some of the other nifty things this Mobo comes with is a built in WiFi adapter, an external eSATA port, and a remote. The remote I probably will never use. The WiFi adapter I have my doubts about. I don't really need it, since the case I'm replacing already has a wired LAN cable routed to it. I also like the fact that it has passive cooling for the north and south bridges. It has plenty of SATA connectors, 2 of which can be dedicated to a separate RAID for what they call EZ-Backup. There was another ASUS board that caught my eye, the P5B Premium Vista Edition. Not only is Vista certified, it's designed around Vista specs. However, it has that same problem with the PCI slots as mentioned before. The gimmick that almost made me think to grab it was the "ScreenDUO", which is basically an LCD readout screen that plugs in the USB port. It allows you to check RSS feeds, launch apps/music, and check system status' like CPU voltages, temperatures, etc. However, a lot of reviews said it was just that.. a "Gimmick" that was really a useless piece of junk. I think I'm going to go with the Digital Home though. I'm not done reading all the reviews on newegg yet, but with a rating like this, after 488 reviews, it can't be that bad!

[Will]

Nice choice on the power supply. I think the main complaint of the modular route is that the extra connection isn't good for efficiency.

Good luck with the build. Sounds like you're gonna have a sweet toy!

[headkaze]

I'm a big fan of MCE 2005, it brings alot of joy to my life. It can be painful to setup though, so as well as TGB I recommend xpmediacentre.com.au as a great place if you have any trouble with that. I just used an old PC as my system, and it runs okay. These days it might be worth getting a dual TV card so you can record while you watch another channel. Big hard drive is essential of course, the video card can be average quality and CPU doesn't need to be that special. Dual core is not necessary. I also have a wireless mouse attached to it, but it gets interference during heavy wifi usage. I picked up an OEM Microsoft MCE remote pretty cheap too. It can be done pretty cheap these days, maybe just a bit more than a hard disk recorder and you get a whole lot more gig for your buck, and you can surf the web in your lounge room. I would go back to XP and forget Vista, you certainly don't need a flashy looking OS "skin" for an MCE machine.

[Tom Speirs]

I would say that Vista Media Center is one of (if not the only) improvements over XP. So just take that into account.

[headkaze]

I would say that Vista Media Center is one of (if not the only) improvements over XP. So just take that into account.

Good point I havn't taken a look at Vista's Media Center so it definately could be worth having Vista for that.

[hansolo77]

Lol! I leave for a few hours, come back, and theres like 3 new messages waiting for me! I love this forum!!!

Anyway, you guys act like I'm totally new to this. I though I made that much clear. When I joined up with this forum, I already had a HTPC built and running MCE2005 off XP. I joined up back in February of '06. Probably around August or so of '05 was when I began building my first box. It's got the big drives (1.5tb total) and the tuner cards (2-analog, 1-digital/hd). What's really prompted my "upgrade" is due to the lack of upgradability on it as it is. When Vista came out, I had already been beta testing the RC1 version with Vista MCE. I really loved every bit of it. I liked the style and the new look it gave. So, of course, the moment it came out, I bought it. However, I never really ran Vista MCE long enough to really get a burn in test of it. Turns out, my video card is severely lacking. ATI's drivers have yet to become stable and solve my crashing problem. So, I need to upgrade the video card. I can't upgrade the video card without going PCIe. I can't go PCIe without upgrading the Mobo. I can't upgrade the Mobo without upgrading the cpu and ram. So I ultimately gotta just start from scratch and transfer over the addon's.

Long story short, I already have the OS. I'm not new to MCE. And I've already been using an HTPC type build for almost 2 years. But thanks for the tips HK..

@will - Thanks for your approval. I spent a lot of time over looking the different power supplies they had on the shelf. They had things ranging from 300w to 1000w. I even saw a big huge white box with some unknown brand label, saying it was the world first 1500w power supply. It looked opened, and the cost was like $700 bucks! I knew I wanted at least 400w because the 300 I've been using is pretty much maxed. They 500w's were there, around $80 bucks or so, but they were non-name brands. I've had Antec power supplies before, and limited my field of vision to that area. They had a wide range of them, some with higher wattage, but with more noise, others with low noise and low wattage. I just grabbed the one that was in the middle, 650w, and advertised as silent (though I've yet to actually hear it). I thought about hooking my current HTPC into this case, but I don't want to run the risk of missing the thing recoding tonights episode of "The 4400". If you've never heard of it, you really should be watching it!

Well, as of this point, since I'm broke, I'm pretty much going to sit tight and read reviews. I think I've made up my mind on the CPU, Intel Core 2 Duo E6600. Seems to have the best reviews for the cost. Cya guys later!

[Will]

Yeah I was busy tonight and missed The 4400. I'll have to watch it tomorrow!

[hansolo77]

Status Update

----------------

Essentially I'm dead in the water this week. My cat has been having trouble. He seems to get this weird urination problem about every 6-8 months. His "pee" seems to crystallize and turn to sludge. That, obviously, makes it damn near impossible for him to go to the bathroom. We've got him on a special diet of low pH Eukanuba, and it really seems to help him in the long run. However, last week it seemed to come back. I didn't realize how bad it was. I got up Monday to go to work, and literally 3 minutes before I went out the door, my dad's like "We may have to put Tippie (his name) down." Apparently he was up all night meowing and screaming because he couldn't go potty. He was also looking like he was backed up so bad, he couldn't move. So I went to work, all worried sick. Dad took him to the vet, fearing the lethal injection as the only solution. You see, my dad is on a fixed income (unable to work, social security, you know the deal) and I don't have a very well paying job. We barely scrape, depending on my paycheck week by week. So we were pretty much afraid he was going to have to be put to sleep. Luckily, the vet was able to put a catheter in him and get him flushed out real good. Tippie's been in the pet hospital now since the 25th. The doctor wanted to make sure everything was going to be ok, since it's like the 3rd time we've taken him. Apparently, Tippie had a Urinary Tract Infection. The "sludge" wasn't his problem this time, which was good. The vet took the catheter out of him today (Saturday) and wants to keep him an extra day to make sure that everything still comes out ok. We can pick him up Monday. Only problem is, the cost is something like $702.xx dollars, and we just don't have it. I get paid weekly, but it's only like $300 bucks. Dad was able to borrow money from his friend for $400, and he called my mom up for another $100. I gave him $100 that I owed him. But now we're still $100 bucks short. Dad says not to worry about it, but you just can't kinda help it.

Anyway, do to that unforeseen situation, I've had to put my upgrade project on hold for this week. Next week (July 4th week) I probably won't be able to do anything either. Who ever we'll be able to get $100 bucks from, I'll have to pay them back. Plus I got the rent due, and also I've gotta dish out money to help pay on half the utilities. Still, I can't complain. I could be out on the street. Or I could be living by myself with no utilities and no food. Or, I could live in an apartment with 5 roommates who are just a bunch of drunken slobs with no jobs, eating my food, drinking my Mountain Dew, and playing with my computer and HTPC. THAT'S NOT EVER GOING TO HAPPEN as far as I'm concerned.

Talk to ya'll later!

[hansolo77]

Status Update

----------------

Alrighty, stage II is now complete. Well, for the most part. I've gone ahead and bought my motherboard. I've decided on the ASUS P5B-Plus LGA 775 Intel P965 Express ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail. I ordered it from NewEgg on Thursday, July 5th, and had it on Tuesday, July 10th. I took everything out of the box and verified everything was there. Then I put it back in the box and shelved it. Originally, the next plan was to take my paycheck this week (I get paid on Wednesday at 12:00 midnight, essentially Thursday morning). I had my processor and videocard on my wish list, ready to order once I got the money. Unfortunately, when I got paid, my Holiday Pay was less than I had hoped. I had a set total from NewEgg, and knew how much my order was going to cost. I was short about $80 bucks.

So, I checked my local computer store's website to see if they had a sale on anything. Luckily they did, and I went shopping! I bought the processor and video card from there instead. The processor was the Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 Conroe 2.4GHz 4M shared L2 Cache LGA 775 Processor - Retail (using NewEgg link). The video card I got was the EVGA 256-P2-N761-AR GeForce 8600GTS 256MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP Video Card - Retail (using NewEgg link).

So, I took these guys home, and jumped on the build. I grabbed the Mobo, and put in the cpu. I've never had an Intel chip before, always used AMD. When I was putting in the chip, I noticed how differently they format the connections. Rather than using a socket type connection, with PINS going into HOLES, this chip uses a bunch of little gold circle PLATES that touch on the PINS in the cpu holder on the Mobo. Now that I've seen it, I can definitely agree the Intel method is much more easier, and there's a very VERY slim chance of screwing it up. The pins on the Mobo are so close together, there really no way "bend" them. I'll admit, I touched them. They're so small, and so close together, it's like you're not even really touching them.

The next part was attaching the heatsink and fan. I may or may not decide to change out the given one. My ultimate goal here is to build an HTPC, so silence is very important. The one it comes with is about 3 inches thick, with about 100 fins going around the center block, with an attached fan at the top. Pretty simple stuff. It had 4 of those quick snap in things to mount it to the motherboard. You know, those little white arrow things that go into the holes, and then snap open from the pressure? These are just like those little guys that hold the heatsinks on your video cards, only on steroids. The first one popped in place really easy. The second one though, I thought it would never go in. I pushed really hard, and even heard the PCB of the Mobo screech a little as it stretched and bended. Nevertheless, it finally went in. Then I did the other 2. The last one was hard too, but they all went in fine. I looked at the Mobo with this thing on there, and checked the cross-section to make sure the board wasn't bent or warped out too badly. It had a little give, but nothing really serious. I then continued to place it in the case.

Mounting the Mobo in the case was supposed to be easy. I spent a lot of time on July 4th with it, routing all the cables in there appropriate places, and making good use of cable ties. A critical step in any computer construction. If you just run wires any which way, you severely cut back on air circulation. Poor circulation leads to excessive over heating, and can eventually cause your components to stop working all together. So try to make use of tape, cable ties, strategic routing, etc., before you start putting in your components. For instance, if you're looking down in the case, with the front of it facing you, the power supply goes in the top right corner. The DVD drive goes on top of the "media" drive (card reader and front access usb/iee/mic/headset) in the lower right. The hard drives are mounted vertically inside a cage over a series of air vents at the lower left. The Mobo and expansion cards go in the top left. Lastly, a pair of 80mm exhaust fans go above the back i/o plate. I spent a lot of time wiring the exhaust fans as tightly together as possible, and ran them directly to the power supply. My power supply I bought has 2 plugs specially labeled for Fans Only. They're meant to supply a lower voltage current to the fans when the power supply's heat sensors kick on. That way they're not always on making a lot of noise. Then I ran the SATA HD power supply leads under the DVD drive and over to the drive cage. I did the same with the 20-pin ATX power and the 6-pin PCI-e power cables. This case is nice, in that under the HD cage, there is those vents I mentioned. The HD cage is mounted on stilts, about 1 inch above these vents. The makers also included a set of 4, pre-drilled holes to mount a fan down there to help bring in the air. I screwed on an extra Silverstone silent 80mm fan from my previous case in there before I attached the HD cage again. I then ran the fans power wire over underneath the DVD drive, and connected it to the other "FAN ONLY" power plug. I may change this and decide to go with an always on plug instead if I find the case is still over heating a bit. I finshed up by attaching a 4-pin power plug to the DVD drive. All the other cables, unfortunately are unattachable, so I just did my best to cram them all into the open void between the DVD drive and the far right edge of the case. I tapped in the I/O plate, and started to mount the Mobo in place. The first time I tried, I couldn't line up the plugs on the I/O plate with the actual Mobo. I started to think the case was built wrong. Then, by some miracle, it just "snapped" right into place. I started to screw the board down. After getting about half way, I took another glance at the I/O at the back, and found I had ran the plates above of the network and IEE ports right into the ports, rather than above them. So, I took it all out again. This was a good thing though, because I realized I forgot to run the DVD audio cable out of the drive and over to the far side of the Mobo. It's kinda short, but the Mobo is up about a half inch off the bottom of the case, so it easily fits just under the board. I re-squared up the I/O plate, got it right on this time. Screws went in great. Careful not to over tighten! Ok, that's done.

The next part was to hook in the RAM. Major upset here, which is why I'm only at Stage II and not Stage III yet. I was originally going to use the RAM I had used in my previous HTPC. I had just bought it last month, for a pretty penny, and was 2gb worth. But when I went to plug the DIMMs into the slots, they won't go in! The key slot cut into the PCB on the DIMMS is like 5 pins to far to the left! They don't line up! I tried flipping it around, but then they're off by like 20 pins! So I guess this Mobo uses a different format of RAM. The only RAM I've ever used is SIMMs and DIMMS. The manual says these are DIMMs, as does the Mobo's on board print. This sucks! Now I gotta go spend another couple hundred bucks on more RAM, and this stuff I just bought last week I can't use!

Well, I decided to go ahead and hook everything else up instead, and will buy some RAM next week I guess. I plugged in the new video card into the PCI-e slot, and connected it's dedicated power cable. I then took out my 2 tuner cards from the previous HTPC. I bought the first one 2 years ago, and the 2nd one around Christmas '06. They are the Hauppauge 1062 PCI Interface WinTV-PVR-150 MCE Kit Tuner Card - Retail for standard TV and Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-1600 for HDTV, as well as a 2nd standard TV. For some reason, NewEgg doesn't have the HVR1600, so I had to link to their website. I didn't buy these at NewEgg though, just my local computer store here. They all went into the case nice and easy.

I then connected all the wires for the front panel lights, power buttons, speaker, volume knob, DVD audio, front panel audio/usb/iee, and the card reader. The last part consisted of mounting the hard drives into the HD cage, and mounting the cage above the installed fan. With everything all in place, and looking very clean and spiffy with lots of room to breathe, I plugged it in and gave it a power up. Just for kicks that is. I wanted to make sure all the lights came on, the buttons worked, and the fans ran. Especially on the CPU and the video card. I had also used an old speaker I rescued from the neighborhood dumpster to check for POST beeps. Everything looked like it passed, minus the RAM, which the speaker indicated for me. I didn't bother connecting a monitor to the case, since I know without RAM the thing won't ever get that far. It was just a test run to make sure everything works ok. Seems like it is right now.

So, once again, I have to put my new HTPC build on hold for another week. My next plans are to get that new RAM, and get the thing at least to the BIOS screen. Then I'll officially be in stage III. I'm undecided on whether I want to format my drives and start fresh again, or just let Windows re-detect all the new hardware and install drivers again. Being a die hard computer enthusiast, I know I SHOULD format. Trouble with that is, I don't want to lose all my recorded TV shows I have saved on the drive. I got 2 drives in there. One drive is 250gb, and thats my media drive. I have all my pictures (non adult) home movies, and music on that drive. I have them all backed up on DVD's, so losing this drive isn't much consequence. With the media taking up only about 12gb, I have the other space being used for the gaming. All my emulators and roms and what not are all stored here. I have a backup of them as well on my main computer in my bedroom. Thats where I download all them from, so it's good to keep them there when a new MAME version comes out for instance. 15gb of roms is a lot to get over and over again, when you can just download the new ones! The other drive though, is 500gb, and thats my OS and recorded TV drive. My intentions were to get 2 of these drives and RAID them together. I've never done RAID and haven't figured out how I want to do it. Plus, I only have 1 drive, and RAID requires 2 or more of IDENTICAL drives. So, I just installed the OS on that drive and used it's remaining space for TV. I should have partitioned it, like 50gb for OS and programs, and 450 for TV. Then I could just format the OS partition. But, like a fool, I forgot to do that when I installed Vista on it. Guess I'll just have to decided on what to do here when the time comes. I imagine I'll just boot up and let the OS find everything, then format if it causes too many problems. Or, I could watch everything and then format too. Heh.

Well I'm tired. Been typing for over an hour. Talk to ya'll guys later!

[hansolo77]

Sorry, internet timed out, duplicate post.