Replacing hard drive

[tom34diy]

Hello, I am new to this forum and see that there are a lot of experts out there. My computer repair skills are limited, so I am looking for help in replacing a 9GB drive with an 80GB (Seagate ATA Ultra) drive on my 4 year old Dell Dimension XPS T500 (PIII) running Windows 98SE. What are the steps for this, and can I just copy everything on the old drive to the new drive, or must I start from scratch and reload everything after I install the new drive? Thanks for any assistance. Tom

[bassman]

Hello tom34diy and welcome to
There are several threads on computer building basics HERE, so I won't go into details in this thread.
In a nutshell, if you want to eleminate the 9 Gig, you will need to start from scratch. There are programs that allow you to make an "Image file" of your existing drive and copy that to your new drive, therefore reducing some of the steps.
If you are adding this new 80 Gig to have more storage, you can add it as a slave and leave the 9 in place.
Take a look at the link above, see how the different configurations work, and then decide how you would like to go.
If you have more questions, post back and we will be more than happy to help further

[gwallen4]

New hard drives come with installation software that guides you through the steps.

Since you are getting 80GB, I would get rid of the old 9GB clunker (sell it) after you transfer all its information.

Here's the steps.

1) Disconnect your CD drives from the IDE secondary cable. Connect the new drive to that cable and to a power connector laying the drive on a piece of cardboard on top of the case. The jumper should be set to Master (if not already factory set to that).

2) Place the installation software floppy disk in the floppy drive and boot.

3) The software will detect both drives and allow you to partition and format the new drive. I always partition my 80 GB drives with a primary partition (new C: drive) of 16 GB (for your operating system and all programs), and a secondary partition (new D: drive) of 64 GB (for all your data, documents, Mp3's, videos. etc.). In the future, when you have to reinstall your operating system, you can just wipe the C: drive clean without destroying your data on D:.

4) The software will then format both logical drives on the new drive. Be careful not to format your existing drive.

5) The installation floppy will have a program to copy the contents of your existing drive to the primary partition of the new drive.

6) After copying the drive, take out your old drive and replace it with the new drive on the primary cable. Reconnect your CD drives on the secondary IDE cable and you are good to go.

The whole job can be done in less than 1/2 hour. Despite the fact that it sounds easy and like nothing can go wrong, I would back up any important data you have in case something gets screwed up.

[gwallen4]

Oh drats.

I just noticed that Seagate's software comes on a CD. Forget the above post and just follow the directions here:

http://www.seagate.com/support/kb/di...ll_tshoot.html

[Steve]

Since you are getting 80GB, I would get rid of the old 9GB clunker (sell it) after you transfer all its information.

I have a 12GB Samsung that I use for OS and programs and an 80GB WD that I use for data and back-up. It's a pretty good setup.

[tom34diy]

Thanks for the responses. I have more info now, which leads me to a few questions before I dive in. My existing drive is a three year old Maxtor 10GB at 7200. I ran a Maxtor test on it that I downloaded last night and the drive apprears to be running fine (but with very little space left). Inside the computer, there appears to be a vacant bay that is horizontal, while the Maxtor fits in vertically. Now, for my questions:

1. What are the advantages/disadvantages of replacing the old drive, versus just using the new 80GB Seagate (at 7200) as a slave? (The slave idea sounds a whole lot easier)

2. I looked at the IDE cable, and I do not see how I will be able to twist it around enough to get the connector to hook up to the new drive. How much of a curve or kink can the cable handle?

3. This may be a silly question, but while I am inside the box, will it hurt anything to use a vacuum to suck out all of the dust?

Thanks for your answers/suggestions. Tom

[gwallen4]

I would definitely use the new drive as your primary drive for the following reasons:

1) Your old drive is too small and it is already full. You need a partition of at least 16 GB for your OS and programs.
2) Your old drive is old - these things tend to die alfter three years.
3) Your new drive will be faster.

The 9 GB of space you would be saving by keeping the old drive costs about $6 on todays market. Are you really willing to risk losing your data and programs for $6.

If you keep the drive, it could be used as a backup drive for your data, so that if your primary disk fails, you still are in business. Outside of that, I see no reason to keep the old drive.

Dust: Yes, while the box is open, try to get rid of any accumulated dust. I take my PC's out in the driveway and blow them out with a high power leaf blower.

[Steve]

It will work either way. You can use just your new drive or both.

I see no reason that you would need a 16GB partition for your OS and programs. You already have your OS, programs and data on a 9GB partition. If you move your data onto the new drive, you should have plenty of room. gwallen4 might be thinking of something I'm missing, though?

The older a drive is the closer it gets to its final day but I'm still using drives that are 7-8 years old and they are working fine.

Using the new drive as storage (slave) IS easy. Keep in mind that it doesn't have to be on the same IDE cable as the old one. You can hook it up to the secondary IDE cable if it is easier. You might want to look into using round cables. They bend easier.

Definately clean out the dust. You can get canned air at Walmart/computer store. Works good.

[Sylvander]

I fitted a new HDD a couple of years back and learned a few things:

1. Does your motherboard support the full ATA capability of the new HDD?
[Mine didn't and my new HDD had to be set to a lower ATA rating.]

2. The HDD manufacturer of the old HDD supplied a utility for changing 1 above and also for transferring the drive contents to the new HDD, and another to check that the [old] BIOS is capable of handling the full capacity of the new HDD.

3. I kept my 7 year-old HDD and found it very useful as a backup drive. I see no sign [yet] of any inclination to fail.
You could use it as the master [C: drive] even though it is small [see "keep the C: drive lean & mean below] provided the speed was not less than the new one, but it probably is less, in which case use it as a backup drive.

Some advice I keep handy:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
It helps if you keep the C: drive "lean & mean".
I move as much as possible off the C: drive [and keep it as small as possible].
The "Windows" & "Program Files" folders account for 95% of the used space on my C: drive.
All the data that changes day by day are re-homed on another physical drive [the D: drive; my old HDD][although another partition would do].
When I "jump back", by re-formatting & re-storing the C: drive, I still have up to data for:
a. My Documents.
b. E-mails for all identities.
c. Internet Explorer Favourites.
d. Temporary Internet Files.
e. Re-home the [Win98] Microsoft Address Book as shown here http://tinyurl.com/2adxv . Use the key “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\WAB\WAB4\Wab FileName” to specify its new address. [Its normal home address [in Win98] is C:\WINDOWS\Application Data\Microsoft\Address Book.]
------------------------------------------------------------------------

4. Make different partitions and categorize your data according to:
A. How often it is likely to need backing up [how often the data is altered].
That way you can back up the different partitions only as needed by their rate of change; thus minimizing the frequency of backup.
B. How big the files are; so you can use bigger or smaller cluster sizes when partitioning, so as to minimize "slack" whilst reducing the number of clusters to be defragmented. This increases the speed of defragmentation and access to the files, and decreases the size of the file allocation tables.

[gwallen4]

Steve:

C: 16 GB drive usage:

Backup another computer: 253 MB - could be kept on D:
My docs: 125 MB
Home Movies: 1333 MB - could be kept on D:
A game: 504 MB
Photoshop: 207 MB
Iterations of mail prog: 202 MB
Sierra (games): 839 MB
Program files: 6390 MB
Windows(98): 825 MB
Other misc.: 350 MB

Total: 11000 MB

In addition you need space for the Windows cache and for a print buffer of at least 1 GB. So 16 GB is not too much. I am currently using 75% of the space on my 16 GB C: drive.

D: has 60 GB of space and is 50% filled with backups, Mp3's, my photo collection, etc.

[Steve]

That's a nice setup. I'm still not sure how it applies to tom34diy...

[gwallen4]

It's always better to have too much space on C: rather than too little. Running out of space makes life complicated.

[Sylvander]

I re-partitioned to make the C: drive a better fit for its contents.
Not too big, not too small.
It's about 80% full.
I've never had a problem with it running out of room, but if I did I'd just resize it.
I do that by making a backup of the contents, then re-partitioning, re-formatting and restoring.

[Steve]

Well, that pretty much covers it. I wonder what Tom is going to do?

[tom34diy]

Thank you everyone for the responses. I left town for a few days and had to set this project aside. Last night, I dove in, and this morning, I have the new 80GB Seagate installed, but only as a slave. Seagate's DiscWizard made it sound so easy to use the new drive as the master/boot drive. All I had to do was install the new drive as a slave, then it would copy everything from the old to the new, then I could switch the drives, making the new one the master. Sound so simple. I could not seem to get this right, so I feel lucky just to have the new storage space without damaging my computer. While using DiscWizard, the copying of the old drive to the new drive began like it was working, but the copying process would have taken 8-10 hours at the rate it was going. Would it be normal to take so long to copy one drive to another? I got impatient, assumed something was not right, and stopped the process. I may try again to make the new drive the master, but not now because I need a break. I listened to suggestions about partioning, and now have four new drives with 16GB each, which equals 64 GB. I wonder where the other 16GB are? Anyway, thanks again. Tom

[gwallen4]

Copying the old to the new does take a while. However 8-10 hours seems like too long. Copying from master to slave takes longer than master to master.

The partitions not adding up to 80 GB is a puzzle. I would look at it with the Seagate partitioning software to see what's going on. I would only make two of the partitions 16GB (unless you are planning on more than two OSes) and make the last partition the remaining GBs.

By the way, Windows will only show 74.5 GB for your 80 GB (80,000,000,000 bytes) drive because of a different counting method for Windows where 1 KB = 1024 bytes, 1 MB = 1024 X 1024 bytes, 1 GB = 1024 X 1024 X 1024 bytes.

[mjc]

I listened to suggestions about partioning, and now have four new drives with 16GB each, which equals 64 GB. I wonder where the other 16GB are? Anyway, thanks again. Tom

I would say that you made each of those 4 a primary partition...fdisk and most compatable software will only allow 4 primary partitions per drive.

So your other 16GB is sitting as unallocated space...you should be able to recover it by using fdisk and creating an extended/logical partition(s).....

[tom34diy]

Sorry to bother you guys again, but Seagate support is not available on weekends. Anyway, I decided to keep trying to make the new 80 GB drive the master and the old drive the slave. Finally, after defragmenting the old drive, turning off screensaver, etc., and reloading DiscWizard, the copying of all files to the new file went much faster. I followed Seagate's instructions and changed the jumpers on the two drives and now my big new drive is the master. I also re-partioned the new one to 16GB and 64GB as suggested. So, here is my new problem. I do not think it is booting from the new drive because I still hear the sounds from the old drive when it boots. Did Seagate leave out a step in their instructions? They did not say to change the IDE connections, so the old drive (slave) is still at the end of the IDE with the new (master) attached to the middle connector. Does this matter? Basically, how can I determine which is the boot drive, and if I find that the old drive is still the boot drive, can I change it just by moving the location of the drives on the IDE cable? Thank alot. Tom

[gwallen4]

Disconnect the old drive temporarily and make sure the new drive does everything you want - that it boots correctly and that programs run as expected.

Detach the new drive and connect the old drive. Boot with a dos boot disk (a startup disk) and use fdisk and format to wipe the old drive clean.

I would use the following configuration for your drives.

Primary master - 80 GB new drive
Primary slave - empty or CD drive

Secondary Master - 10 GB old HD
Secondary Slave - CD burner or Drive

Writing from one HD to another is faster if they are on different IDE cables.

I don't think it matters which drive (master or slave) is where on the cable. The drive jumpered as master should boot first.

[tom34diy]

Great suggestion of disconnecting the old drive to ensure the new one is doing everything it should. That will really raise my comfort level before I erase the old drive. As for drive placement, I went ahead and placed the new drive at the end of the IDE cable, but I cannot tell any difference. The next thing I would like to do is have the computer call the new drive "c:" but I will have to do a little research on that one. Thanks for your ideas. Tom

[tom34diy]

I did as suggested and unplugged the old (now the slave) drive to see if the computer booted, but it would not. Apparently, my computer needs both drives to boot. To get it to boot, I have to use Discwizard Starter on a floppy to change things so the BIOS will work with the large hard drive. If I disconnect one of the drives, it takes me numerous attempts to get both drives going again with this software. Any idea why this is so hard? Here are my questions:
1. What should be the settings in Windows 98SE setup, under IDE Configuration, with two hard drives (especially if I just want it to boot from the primary? (My settings are that the new drive is primary master, the old drive is secondary master, then the CD I believe is next.)
2. The system only boots with the IDE controller set to BOTH. I tried it with the controller set to PRIMARY but it would not boot. Any idea why?
3. Do these settings under "BOOT" in setup look correct? They show:
1st Boot Device - [Removable devices]
2nd Boot Device - [ATAPI CD-ROM Drive]
3rd Boot Device - [Hard Drive]
4th Boot Device - [Network Boot}
This does not make sense to me. Should I change these settings?
4. When I use the floppy to change the BIOS so it will boot, some of the instructions say power down, other places it says reboot. Is there a significant difference in powering down and rebooting?
If anyone can help, that would be great. Thanks. Tom

[gwallen4]

OK. With the new HD in primary master position and old HD in secondary master, the computer appears to boot from the old HD. That means that it is not booting from the new HD. The new HD is unreadable.

Possible reasons:

1) Primary cable plugged into secondary slot.
2) Bad IDE cable connection with MB or HD
3) Bad cable
4) Incorrect jumper configuration.
5) Incorrect Bios settings
6) Bad hard drive or HD no partitioned and formatted incorrectly.

Disconnect all IDE devices except the new HD. Check all of the possible problems above. Boot and see if the new HD is recognized by bios. Boot with Seagate floppy and look to see if that software sees the drive.

[tom34diy]

Sandman, Thanks for the suggestions, and I will try them, but I want to run this by you before I change anything that causes me to have to deal with that Seagate floppy and Discwizard Utilities and rebooting, etc. again. When I look into the BIOS it shows the new drive as the master and the old as the slave. Also, as the floppy is loading, I see that it picks up on the new and the old drive, and refers to the new drive as the boot drive. Also, in Discwizard Utilities (where I go to change the drive size for booting) it lists both drives. Doesn't this mean the new drive is being read? One thing I am not sure of is that the new drive is partitioned and formatted correctly. How can I check this without having to reload everything onto the new drive again (It took hours the first time). Thanks. Tom

[Sylvander]

If both HDD's are jumpered as Master, and both HDD's have primary partitions on them, and both HDD's have those primary partitions marked as "active" by the partitioning program, and both those Hdd's have an Operaring System installed in those Active Primary Partitions:

How is DOS supposed to know which OS to boot?
Perhaps it tries to boot both!

I would make one of those HDD's the Master and one the Slave.
The Master drive should be the only one with an ACTIVE Primary Partition.
If the Slave HDD has a Primary Partition on it with an OS installed, it will not boot so long as the Primary Partition is not marked ACTIVE.
To make that Slave drive boot you'd need to switch the Master/Slave jumpers on both drives and switch the ACTIVE partition designations.
Your HDD's would need to be set to "Auto" detect in the BIOS setup so that when you switch the jumper settings the drive parameters are corrected in the BIOS.
There's a thought!
If both HDD's are jumpered as Master, how would the BIOS designate one as HDD0 and the other as HDD1?

No way would I make them both Master!
Make the one you intend should be booted the Primary Master, and the other the Primary Slave.
That Primary Master should have its primary partition marked active and have an OS installed in it.

[tom34diy]

One step I never did was to go into Fdisk and set anything as active on the new drive. I thought the Discwizard software took care of everything after I told it which one I wanted to be the master/boot drive. I am guessing this might be the problem. The new drive has two partitions which I set, but I never set one as "active." I do have the new drive set as Primary Master and the old drive set as Primary Slave. My question - Can I now go into fdisk and set one partition as active without having to erase everyting I put on the new hard drive and start all over? Also, I have no experience in fdisk so any tips in setting the active partition would be helpful. Thank you. Tom