New Hardrive!

I want to buy a new one and never installed a new HD before so what do i need to check before buying one?
ive heard i need to find out if its a SATA or something?? idk how do i find out if my m0b0 takes SATA's?

im all confused

 

we need to know your motherboard. if its an old pc (>5 years old) its most likely only supports PATA (commonly know as just ATA)

 

it's almost guaranteed to support pata aka eIDE aka IDE aka ata

if it's recent it will support both most likely.

we need your motherboard's name though.

 

my mobo is about 5 years old could be a year younger

 

it will almost 100% for sure have an IDE aka pATA port on it.

 

Will, would the harddrive be a master or a slave?

 

a master, the one im running on at the moment is 80 i was thinking 250 of buying a 250 which should last a bit longer

 

Well, you can just plug it in the power supply and the mother bored, most of them work automatically, but u'll need to install fresh windows xp if its going to be the master.

There an option in the Bios aswell where you enter the hard drives serial or w/e and it automatically detected, if not then its desabled

 

ehh i just leave it on csel(cable select)

personally don't care if ti's master or slave, installing the OS onto the drive and giving that OS install first priority takes over any master/slave issues which used to exist 15-20 years ago. here and today it really doesn't matter so much for the home user. Atleast not in my experience