Firstly, those drives are SCSI (a type of hard drive controller/interface), which isn't very common, so you'd better check that your pc supports scsi before getting one. From the specs you posted, it looks like your motherboard only has SATA, which is another, far cheaper interface. Sata is very good though, and it's what most people use, seeing as SCSI is so expensive.

Secondly, yes i would buy from somewhere else because it is far cheaper than dell, who rip you off with upgrades that you could get for about a quarter of the price. I personally would go out and buy a nice big SATA Western Digital hard drive, but the make is just down to preference . I can't see that anything will go wrong from installing a hard drive, but if you are really worried, then get Dell to do it. It's up to you, and how confident you feel.

Hope this helps.

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Thanks seymore. I selected my model on the Dell site and it brought these two drives up so I guess they must be compatible.

But I think you're right - from what I've read, a SATA drive should be a good option for me in terms of speed/cost so I think I will ask this girl I know if she could install one for me (what kind of guy am I eh - asking a girl to do a simple installation for me hehe )

Yeah, Western Digital have a good reputation on here don't they. I shall have a look at that route now I think.

I shall give you an update tomorrow (if anyone isn't bored yet hehe).

Cheers.

It's done!

*Gulp!* I've just bought my first computer hehe!

I bought the Dell (with a single 250GB SATA drive) that I listed the specs for above.

I felt well nervous after I put the phone down - it was the thought that I'd just whacked another £1260 quid on my Barclaycard that I can't really afford and there's no going back hehe!

I hope I've made the right choice, but thanks for all your help guys I would have still been dithering without you!

Once it arrives and I get up and running I shall then be back on your ear to ask which model of second Hard Disk I should buy hehe. So you have a few weeks grace until then...

Speak to you all soon. Cheers.

Great!

It was fun helping you, and I hope it all works out.

__________________
http://www.studioxpro.com

:.: StudioX Productions :.:
Dedicated to low-budget film-making

If you're not happy about about opening your PC to add a second drive then you could always add an external one via a USB2 socket (as the firewire socket will be used by your camcorder when transfering video). The LaCie unit is on the PCPro magazine A list and can be picked up online for under £90 for 250Gb.

I used two drives originally, #1. Windows XP/Programs # 2. Video Capture. I recently added a third hard drive. I render the finished video to the third drive. This alleviates the performance bottleneck of having the same drive reading the captured video and trying to write the rendered video at the same time to the same drive. Just my 2 cents, but I think 3 drives is the optimal setup.