Adding new main hard drive

[stonesour]

ok, i want to buy a new hard drive for my computer which is a 1.9 P4 running windows 2000. I have 2 Hd's on it right now and my main hard drive is only something like 13 gigs, yah i know pretty small! I want to upgrade that drive to a 60 gig drive. My second hard drive is a 40 gig and i mainly use that to store music and media files on, so that drive is still ok.

My questions are how hard is it to take your main HD out and replace it with a brand new one? Is it a pain to reinstall windows and the programs on it? Ive heard friends say that you can link the old Hd and the new HD and copy the files onto the new HD, is this true? Those are my main concerns which is why i havent really upgraded to a new HD. I kinda why i bought a second 40 gig drive to avoid this but the inevitable(sp?) cant wait! Im thinking of going with a Maxtor or Western Dig. 60 gig (7200rpm) drives. So am i stressing over nothing???

[Atomic Rooster]

It's a fairly easy transition over to a new HDD. The new HDD should come with an install floppy that will not only format the new drive, but will also transfer the entire contents of the existing HDD including the OS and all files/settings to the new HDD.

[John Prophet]

Well nowadays the drives all (I think) come with drive copying software. That is what you need to copy your 13gig over to the new one.

So you would do something like this.

Temporarily disconnect a cdrom or the 2nd hard drive you currently have.

Hook the new drive up. Boot from the floppy that comes with the drive..this is the floppy that has the drive copying software on it.

Follow the drive copying instructions.

When its finished copying..shut the computer down.

Take out the 13g drive and put the new hard drive in its place.

Hook the other drive or cdrom back up (whichever you disconnected to temporarily hook up the new drive.)

Finished.

of course you also have jumpers on the hard drive. That is usually where we all have little issues...by having the jumpers wrong...it wont hurt anything, it just wont allow the drive to be recognized.

And you might have to do some setting or resetting of stuff in the bios but probably not.

Go to Maxtor or Western Digitals websites and they probably have articles on how to do exactly what you want to do.

Or do a search on google.

Either way its not really that hard.

JP

[VHockey86]

Pretty good explanation there JP =)

Personally tho, if it were me I would just put all the data I wanted to backup on the 40gig drive, then Id put the new drive in, do a complete format on the new drive and reinstall windows.

I just always like that nice fresh clean windows feel, when stuff runs really fast and it boots up quickly. Windows tends to bloat itself over time so i normally do a reinstall every few months to keep my system performing top notch

[munkeyboy123]

hey ur stressing over nothing, you can transfer the files from ur old hd to ur new one thats what i did. u can select it through the software that comes with ur new hd. i got a maxtor 30gig 7200rpm and i transfored my files from my first one which was 6 gig and u thought urs was small. but it toke me about 2 and a half hours but i guess depending on how much stuff u have on ur first drive. but u can just re-put every thing i think it would take as long or longer but i would just transfer. note: u have to have the new drive set to slave and the old one to master connect.

[John Prophet]

If you put the old and new on the same IDE cable it will transfer slower. Its better to put them on seperate cables AT LEAST WHILE YOU ARE TRANSFERRING. JP

[munkeyboy123]

ur right i noticed that when i did my friends computer.i thought it was funny that all my saved passwrods, etc. wernt there.

[stonesour]

thanks for your help guys! I ordered a Maxtor 60 gig HD and hope to have it by wednesday! Ill let you know how it goes! Thanks again!