I'm planning to add some stuff to my HP Pavillion. I want an extra hard drive and my specs say I have a 3.5 inch bay open. Will any internal hard drive fit in there? And what is the most reliable type of hard drive out there? I'm also going to be upgrading my car at the same time...newer, better. Got to get it back from the shop first. Yippee!!

Amy....I work for hp.....have a pavilion. TRUST ME

Any 3.5" hard drive will do. I suggest staying away from maxtor, and going with a Western Digital. Pavilions favor the WD, and they're far simpler to set up!

Most ATA hard drives will fit in a 3.5" opening. They usually come with an adapter kit so they can fit in the 5.25" openings as well.

Personally, I like Seagate the best. Western Digital and Maxtor aren't too bad either. I would however stay away from most off brand name ones. I have seen a lot of them go bad before their time.

What do you do with your pc? If you do any audio or video I would try to get a hd with the folowing specs:
7200 RPM
ATA/133
UDMA
and check out seek times as well

I haven't bought a new HD in a bit so there may be better than this out there now but that'* my 2 cents.

Does anyone know if there is a limit on hard drive capacity before my computer says "no more please!"? I've got a 40 gb, but i do a lot of audio and video stuff so I was thinking about adding a 120 gb. Should that be a problem?

No 120gb shouldn't be a problem....but thats an awful lot of space for something to go wrong.

I have a primary 40gb for windows and the main programs/games

Then I have a secondary 80gb for videos, music, things i dl, etc
the secondary is also a backup.

Oh and both are Seagates, which I prefer.

So it would be better to get an 80 gb? I guess 120 is kinda big....I had to go through and delete a bunch of stuff the other day because my hard drive was almost full....so I just assumed bigger was better.

I agree with Allmachtige. 120 shoudn't be a problem but it is godd to keep your OS and data seperate. I have an 80g drive that is partioned into 3 drives, 1) is the primary OS, 2) is where I install my apps to, and 3) is where I keep all my data.

Depending on your OS here is the drive sizes it can support:
Windows 95/98 = up to 32G
Windows 98se/ME = up to 128G
Windows NT/2000/XP = up to 138G (or possibly more)
Apple, Linux, Unix = up to 138G (or possibly more)

As far as a 120g vs 80g, It never really hurts to have more than you need, espeacially doing any sort of video, audio, and graphical editing.

I'm running a 60 and an 80, alot of vid, pics, and over 8,000 mp3'*. They're ALL on the 80! Should be plenty.

Here'* what I'm running presently:
AMD Thunderbird 850MHz; ATI Rageon 7500 DDR; 17" NEC AccuSync 75F Monitor; 56X CD-ROM; AKAI Stereo Integrated Amplifier; SHAW Cable Modem & Windows XP Pro