Last summer (I guess summer before last technically) I wanted a second hard drive, so I bought myself a sata 160 gig, hearing that sata was an improvement over ide. the problem was, my motherboard didnt have native sata support (its an msi kt4 ultra), and so I also bought a promise tx2 plus sata controller card that fit into a pci slot. I proceed to move alllll my data over to my new hard drive, and a month or so later when I was playing painkiller, my drive crashed- I ran the ibm disk check utility and it reported that the drive was defective, and so I sent it back and got a replacement. The drive was ok, but the problem is, that explorer locks up all the time, I usually have to end explorer.exe and restart it. I think my motherboard doesnt like the hard drive running through that pci controller card, and so i'm thinking of going ahead and buying a new motherboard (just the same socket A) that has built in sata controllers on it. I'll just keep the same processor, my 2 gig athlon, and clean and apply new thermal paste to the heatsink- though i've never done that, i'm sure it cant be too tough. Funny thing is, with the newer boards that support the newer processors, the boards that are socket A appear to be quite a bargain- I mean I just dont think I need a board that supports the newer processors at this time- everything I need seems to be done fine with my athlon 2 gig. Any of you guys have any thoughts/suggestions? Thanks  |
Posted:
04-03-2006
