Installing new hard drive????

It's easier and not such a bad idea to add the new hard drive as a data drive and keep your original drive as your operating system and application drive.

If you really want to move everything including OS to the new drive and completely remove the old drive, get something like Norton Ghost, that copies entire drives and will move to a new drive so that the new drive can still be bootable. A couple hours worth of work. Not that difficult, but not for the novice either.

There may be free programs that do the same as Ghost.

 

Nope, you should just add the 200Gb HD in addition to the one you already have. That way, you will be able to drag/drop all your data, and keep Windows and programs.

All you'll have to do is make sure the 200Gb HD is in "slave" (usually a jumper on the back), plug the power and IDE, and you're done.

 

An external hard drive would be a nice, easy solution.

 

Damn straight!!! Plug the USB, done deal. Especially with a laptop, it's perfect. 60Gb are nearly full, plug the USB, bam! another 250Gb available!!!

 

Robbie,

I agree witht the advice here.

What are the specs of the computer and what OS are you running?

 

I second (third?) the vote for a slave drive.. an external USB drive is a good second place but I'm not sure about the speed it gives.

It's really a simple operation and you really can't plug anything in where it doesn't belong. Buy a can of that aerosol (?) keyboard-dusting stuff while you're at it. If you haven't opened the case in a year or two it's going to be dust-bunny central.

 

installing a new hard drive is eeassy as!! you select the port - ide for the plug to go in, select master or slave - in your case it will be slave.. its then a simple matter of going into the boot settings and making sure it all runs fine.. i did a two year course for network administration - it was mainly boring although they did teach me some interesting stuff..

if you want to go easy, and not hire a technician if you're not confident about installing it yourself, get a USB hard drive - i have an 80gb one - about the size of an ipod works great - and allows for easy transfer of enourmous files

 

If you do purchase an enternal drive, make sure your computer has USB 2.0 ports on it. If it doesn't, don't get an external.

Internal drives are easy to install. Retail boxed drives (like Maxtor) come with a set of nicely illustrated installation instructions that will guide you through the procedure.

Also, if you do purchase a new internal drive, determine what interface your computer supports before buying one. Common interfaces are IDE and SATA, which are often sold side by side in retail stores. Determining which interface(s) your PC supports prior to purchase will save time and aggravation associated with returning a product either in person or via mail.

 

also, look online on places like pricegrabber.com and bizrate.com. you can usually find really good prices on there

 

If you have an xp pro machine you should just be able to add this drive and it might auto configure. Did the drive come with directions?

 

Does it have a dip switch or set of pin jumpers to select slave or master?

 

http://westerndigital.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=41

Is it a caviar drive? This is the info if it is..........

 

http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=84&p_created=1005005461&p_sid=*p3uxLWh&p_lva=&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPTEmcF9zb3J0X2J5PSZwX2dyaWRzb3J0PSZwX3Jvd19jbnQ9NDQmcF9wcm9kcz05MSwwJnBfY2F0cz0xMjMmcF9wdj0xLjkxOzIudTAmcF9jdj0xLjEyMzsyLnUwJnBfc2VhcmNoX3R5cGU9YW5zd2Vycy5zZWFyY2hfZm5sJnBfcGFnZT0xJnBfc2VhcmNoX3RleHQ9anVtcGVyIHNldHRpbmdz&p_li=&p_topview=1

 

Same.........


Jumper pins 3-4 and connect to secondary drive connector on the ribbon cable. Your other drive should be set as master (prob. already is)

There is a utility file they suggest you use. It might be required....not sure. If it was me, I'd just reboot and see if it was auto detected first.

 

No,

It should make it another drive like "D" or "E" then you just use it like a drive.

 

sure