This (unofficial) website contains details about the Medion MD8083 computer, which went on sale at Aldi stores across the UK on April 1st 2004. Please see the main page first if you are new to this site.

Drives in the Medion MD8083
There's a 200gb Seagate hard drive installed in the MD8083, which is partitioned in to three sections - C, D and E. There's also a Pioneer DVD Re-writer, and a standard 16 speed DVD drive. A range of memory card slots and also available behind the front panel, and each of these are represented as drives in Windows Explorer.

The internal hard drive
A Seagate ST3200021A Barracuda 7200.7 Plus internal hard drive is represented in Windows Explorer as Drives C, D and E. Medion strongly suggest that these partitions are left as they are - presumably for recovery purposes. Drive C (BOOT) is 93.1gb, Drive D (BACKUP) 83.3gb, and the remaining space 9.75gb is Drive E (RECOVER). Unfortunately I didn't check how much free space there was on Drive C from new, but after installing my main standard programs which I use regularly there's still a massive 74.8gb free space, with about 81.2gb free space on Drive D, and 5.7gb free space on Drive E.

I've not looked in to details of how Medion recommend backing up your data, as I use a pair of external hard drives to backup my data as I used to on my previous PC, but I note on the Aldi advert that a backup software was mentioned, and there's a Favourite defined in Internet Explorer's Favourites for Powerquest backup, which takes you to a Symantec webpage with details about the product. I believe that this may be pre-installed, although as I've not a need for using it, I've not explorered any further. Never quite seen the point in backing up vital data to the same hard drive as the drive that it's stored on, as surely if the hard drive fails you've lost the backup too?

If backing up data is important to you, then I'd recommend an external hard drive too (Aldi sold a 160gb firewire and USB2 one a couple of months before the MD8083 computer, and this is one of the two external drives that I use) and as a point of interest, I use Iomega's Automatic Backup software to backup my data, and it appears to do a good job. I'd assume that the included PowerQuest software also does just as good job.

The DVD drives
System information programs that I have checked say that the DVD ReWriter drive included in the MD8083 is a Pioneer DVR-107D which as far as I can tell seems to be a very high-spec drive, and if not the very top of the range as of April 2004, it's certainly near the top.

In addition to the DVD writer there's also a standard DVD drive, which is 16x.

Memory card drives
Each of the memory card slots (except the Smart Card, which has it's own software to access it) is represented as a "Device with Removable Storage" drive in Windows Explorer, much like a CD or floppy drive. When you insert a memory card in to the card slots, the LED next to the slot should light up as the card is being read, and then remain on whilst the card is inserted.

To browse the data on a memory card, just go to Windows Explorer via the normal method (either by double clicking on My Computer, or pressing the keyboard shortcut of Windows+E) and selecting the relevant drive from the list.

User Forum...
MD8083 Forum
Medion MD8383XL, MD8080, MD8084, MD8386, Advent T9 information also available in the forum.

Links...
Medion website