Hard Drive

[Diz]

In the very near future I will need to buy a hard drive to replace my very little and full 3 gig drive I have on my pc now. I plan on getting a 30 or 40 gig hard drive. I want to install it myself since I have had success upgrading all of the other hardware on my pc. I need the data that is on my current hard drive on the new drive. I need a step-by-step procedure for installing the new drive and getting the data from the old drive to the new one. I did want to keep both drives but I think I use the last power plug for my CD rewritable. Is there still a way to do that too. Please help!

[mjc]

1. Most hard drives come with software to allow the transition of the contents of the old to the new one.

2. There are splitter cables for splitting the power connections, they're about $4 at Radio Shack.

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mjc
Links list:Computer Links (http://www.fortunecity.com/skyscraper/highrise/11/index.htm)

468th Rule of Aquistion: Debugging of software is foolish, there is much profit in updates and upgrades.

[Diz]

Thanks!! http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/smile.gif

[This message has been edited by Diz (edited 04-25-2001).]

[tjaymadison]

Diz, that's quite a big jump. You should verify that your BIOS and/or Windows version will support a hard drive that size without having to split it up into four or five partitions. Check out this (http://pcguide.com/ref/hdd/bios/size.htm) in The PC Guide.

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"When I nod my head, hit it with the hammer."
(Moe, holding nail, to Curly, holding hammer)

[Diz]

My PC that I want to upgrade is PC100 SOcket 7 board with 196 megs of ram and 500mhz processor. Do you think it will not be able to handle such a big hard drive?

[Randy_tx]

As long as you have Win98 on the old drive.....it will easily handle it. The "detailed" instructions to complete your project are better found within this site @ PC Guide.

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Will XP save Me ?

[Diz]

Where would I find that Randy?

[BigBlue66]

Hey Diz,

As mentioned previously, the new HD will come with Disk Management Software, by various names depending on the manufacturer.

First thing to do is to install the new HD as slave on the primary IDE channel, or master on the secondary IDE channel if you have it free. If you have to, you can borrow the power cable from the CDRW temporarily, until you're ready to boot up with the new HD. Then, run the DM s/w to set up the drive. Make sure you have the correct drive number chosen before running the setup routine. ie., partition and format. The DM s/w will display a list of all HD's in your system, including the old one, which is usually number 1, but verify that to make sure. You will of course want to chose the drive letter for the new one before you partition and format.

Next, run the BIOS checking feature in the DM s/w to make sure your BIOS will handle that size HD. If it won't, the DM s/w will install its own BIOS to enable your system to make full use of the new HD.

Next, there should be an option to copy all contents from one drive to the other. Run that, again making sure you are choosing the correct drive letters as the source and target. Then, unhook both harddrives and install the new HD as master on the primary IDE channel. Boot up. If it turns out that your original BIOS will handle the size of the new HD, then go into the BIOS setup to make sure the new drive is detected correctly. If the old BIOS would not handle the new drive's size, then when you boot up, you will see the DM s/w's BIOS take over. In that case, there is nothing left to do but let the system boot up. It should boot the same as your old HD.

It might be a good idea to partition the new HD into at least three partitions. After it's all booted up and everything, edit your win.ini or system.ini file (can't remember which) to place your swap file on the second partition. Reboot with the DM in the floppy drive. Next, choose to copy all contents of the primary partition to the last partition. This way, if you ever have problems, you can just format the primary partition and then use the DM s/w to copy back all contents from the last partition to the primary partition. You will of course lose anything new that you have added since the initial copying, etc..

I just recently did the whole routine mentioned above on my son's computer. It worked flawlessly.

Good luck.

Big Blue 66


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The 50-50-90 rule: Anytime you have a 50-50 chance of getting something right, there's a 90% probability that you'll get it wrong.

[Diz]

Thanks Blue, I am getting the hard drive today.... I will give it a shot.