Installing New Hard Drive

[sierra01]

My hard drive has always been very noisy, often it revs itself up, and everything freezes so I can’t do anything until it slows down a bit. It even revs up when I’m not actually doing anything, maybe reading something on the screen or something similar. The freezing has been happening for a year or so but nothing too bad, now it’s doing it more and more and I’m fed up with it to the point that I want to fit a new one.

Now the questions! How do I find out which type of HDD I have so I can get a new one and do a straight swap? Is it just a case of unplugging and unscrewing it and the same to mount a new one? Once it’s in do I switch on, put my XP disk in and install the OS?

All help gratefully received!

[paulfr]

Ahhhh you are very likely going to lose ALL your data soon.

Your HDD is telling you with that noise and freezing that it is sick and about to die.

You can get a new 250GB drive for around 2500thb.

Plug it in and the computer will search for a driver for it which comes with the drive usually on a CD.

Then after formatting it, transfer all your data to it and consider the old drive a backup of your data.

Better do it before that drives dies and all your data becomes irretrievable or expensive to recover with SW or specialized data retrieval services.

[Kyosuken]

@op : You can determine what type of hard drive (Ide parallel, or SATA) when looking inside the bios/or at boot... but the best way to do that is actually opening the case of your computer : check the cables, if you see a flat grey/black "large" cable, it's mostly Ide Parallel ata (PATA or most commonly called IDE) if you see at least a small one flat too but not very large at all and usually red colour then it's IDE SATA, commonly called SATA.

If your computer is less than a year old you may have both type of connectors on the mother board, if you don't have too much data to backup maybe burn them on CDs or DVDs, then just get rid of the old Hard drive and plug the new one in, and as you wanted to do, just setup a regular XP installation and rock and roll !

[sierra01]

This is what I have now, its the Seagate ST380013AS Barracuda 80 GB 7200 RPM Serial ATA Disk Drive. I could do with about a 120 GB drive with the same or better spec of my old drive, any suggestions?

Can I leave everything connected (Monitor, mouse, keyboard, scanner etc) when I switch it on after installing the new drive? Do I put the new drive's CD in before the first boot? At what stage do I start installing XP?

Lots of questions but I'm not very savvy with it all!

Edited November 17, 2007 by sierra01

[Kyosuken]

So you have SATA (that stands for Serial ATA) yes you could go with 120/160/200/XXX GB drive it will likely work !

Yes you can leave everything connected (but you should operate with everything unplugged from any power source) : what i would do in this order :

Unplug any power source (from monitor/scanner/printer/computer case), then remove the case, keep your old drive in the PC for now.

Then put the new drive in your computer, unplug the previous hard drive cables, plug them in your new disk, fortunately SATA is very easy to deal with you don't have to play with Master/Slave settings like legacy IDE PATA had to be dealt with.

Then when it's done, plug back power source for monitor and computer case, boot up the PC to be sure the hard drive is detected correctly at boot up (it should) if NOT then check carefully that the cables are well "plugged", when everything is "cleared" on that part.

Take your XP cd, boot up from it, follow instructions and it will likely install smoothly, as you are setup is running SATA in standalone mode (not RAID) you won't need any special "drivers" to be loaded from the XP installation to see the hard drive, if the setup fails though, it means that some drivers need to be loaded when you boot the XP CD

// This part is necessary IF and only IF the XP installation stopped at one moment saying : Unmountable Boot Device

If you have to do that it gets tricky... you need the CD of your motherboard, locate SATA drivers on it, copy them to a Floppy disk, bootup again the XP cd, make a normal installation procedure at one moment you will be ask to press F2 if you want to load 3rd party drivers with your setup : insert your floppy if done right it will copy the drivers and go on with installation

// End of tricky part

After that when you are in Windows, here goes the routine to setup everything back again : Scanner/Printer/Sound/Graphic Card/Lan (ethernet)/Etc drivers if needed, then setup internet (should be automatic depending on your configuration) install some office software if needed, adobe reader, windows updates (i advise to do that first as soon as your internet is working ) !

And you are set !

Edit : I didn't mentioned the obvious, when Windows has been installed, unplug any power source again, take out your old drive, close the case again, plug back the power !

Edit 2 : To backup your data at this stage you have 2 easy ways :

- First burn to cd/dvd whatever you want to save : Music/Pictures/documents etc (mails/internet favorites and so on if you need too)

- Or the second route, if you get some external case for drive when you take out the drive from the computer plug it in some SATA ide external case (that works with USB) so you can use back this drive and get your files

I would still do First, just in case

Edited November 17, 2007 by Kyosuken

[sierra01]

Would the ST3160815AS be a suitable replacement? It seems to have good reviews.

I have everything backed up onto an external drive so no problems there.

Am I right in thinking that with XP I can save my settings and transfer them to another computer (new HDD) so I dont have to mess about getting colours, font sizes etc back to how I like them?

[Kyosuken]

Well, if for casual computing, unless you get a defective hard drive... anyone will be good.

And for the second part yes XP got a utility so backup anything you want to transfer from one XP install to another : accessible through : Start/all programs/Accessories/System tools/Files and settings transfer wizard. But if it's erm a little too much, you can simply save a "theme" of your actual desktop to keep your layout settings,right click the desktop>Properties>on Themes 'tab>Click Save as, find a place where to save and that's good.

[sierra01]

Thanks Kyosuken, I'll order the HDD tomorrow. If you dont hear from me for the next 6 months you'll know I ran into trouble with it all!

[Guest Reimar]

You've even the choice of "cloning" your old HDD to the new one. The only limitation is that the new one need be min the same size as the old one. If you buy abd 250 GB and you "cloning" the old 80 GB to the new on the new one will have and 80 GB Partition as Drive C on the new HDD and an "empty" space of 170 GB which you can use for to create a 2. Partition.

The cloning make an 1:1 copy of your Old HDD to the new one and you don't need to reinstall everything.

I use for HDD cloning HDD Clone but many other using Norton Ghost. Importand after the cloning is finish, do not start the computer, disconnect the old HDD to first.

[lopburi3]

I would highly advise cloning if you want to preserve everything. Nothing will have to be reinstalled and all settings will be the same. Was not happy at all with the results of the Windows transfer. Highly advise getting at least a 250GB, especially if you start to download any video.

[sierra01]

I'm downloading Norton Ghost now.

I presume that I make a copy on CD with the prog, change the HDD, switch on so the PC can 'find' the new HDD then put the clone CD in and let it do its thing?

I did say I wasnt too savvy!

My present 80 GB HDD still has 30 GB spare, so 160 GB should be ample for me. I do d/l movies but once Ive seen them they go in the bin.

[Guest Reimar]

I'm downloading Norton Ghost now.

I presume that I make a copy on CD with the prog, change the HDD, switch on so the PC can 'find' the new HDD then put the clone CD in and let it do its thing?

I did say I wasnt too savvy!

My present 80 GB HDD still has 30 GB spare, so 160 GB should be ample for me. I do d/l movies but once Ive seen them they go in the bin.

I would suggest to go for a bigger HHD because the price difference is just a little and the software get bigger and bigger! Even the normal warranty is now 5 years. So what's the point to go for an low capacity one?!

To clone the HDD you need to create a Boot CD or Disk, have both HDD connected: the old and the new one and boot form the Ghost CD/Disk. Follow the screen instruction for to to clone the old to the new HDD and after finishing cloning switch off the computer, disconnect the old HDD and start the computer after that again. Everything should be work fine by than!

DON'T START THE COMPUTER WITH BOTH HDD CONNECTED AFTER CLONING!

Set the new HDD as Bootdrive in the Bios too to be sure that you directly start from the new HDD. After you've done that you can down the computer, connect the old HDD again and that HDD will d]be the second drive.

[sierra01]

In the end I chickened out, I didnt feel confident enough of being able to set it up properly. My local shop charged £13 including a couple of SATA leads and a splitter, so not too bad. I used Ghost to clone the drive, it imported some problems from the old drive so I'm having to start again, its not too bad though.

Only problem I have now is how do I get the keyboard number lock to stay on all the time, any one please?

[the scouser]

I, too, am as equally computer unsavvy and I don't wish to appear flippant, but have you tried pressing the "num lock" key on your keyboard?

Scouse.

[sierra01]

Yes I have but I have to press it each time I turn the computer on, it shouldnt be like that.

[Naam]

DON'T START THE COMPUTER WITH BOTH HDD CONNECTED AFTER CLONING!

Reimar, i am aware of that warning but have done it a zillion times without any problems (i'm cloning my drive on a daily basis). could you explain why it is not advisable? thanks.

add info: for years i used to clone with "Maxblast", since a year i switched to "Ghost".

Edited December 1, 2007 by Naam

[Rice_King]

Yes I have but I have to press it each time I turn the computer on, it shouldnt be like that.

There is a setting in the BIOS that you can toggle. Numlock-ON or Numlock-OFF on startup. For your preference, check to be sure it is set to ON.

[sierra01]

Rice king, i found the setting, it was on. I tried it set to off, it didnt work, set it back to on, it still didnt work....help!

[Upcountry]

sierra01,

Can you try a different keyboard? Maybe yours is old or has some late night remnants stuck in it!

I'm a little late responding in regard to the hard drive, but I'll share that I had to deal with a failing drive recently. Fortunately, my computer was till under warranty, so I got a free replacement. Same size, unfortunately. A clicking sound, and web search confirming the symptom, clued me into the problem.

For drive size, I would generally recommend getting the largest size you can afford because you never know how much space you'll need next year. Images, video, audio, it all takes up more space before we know it. You might pick up a new hobby or project that requires disk space.

Here's what I did with the failing multi-partition SATA drive.

I set up my new drive in an external USB case and ghosted the C volume (first the manufacturer's small boot volume). The result was that C:\ took up most of the new drive. Then I used Partition Magic to reduce the size of the c:\. I swapped the drives and verified that the new one booted.

Next, I tried making the other partitions with Windows (with the new drive back on USB), but had trouble getting one of them recognized when I put the new drive in. The computer also had trouble shutting down. Drive partition mapping issues, I suppose. I had tried using Partition Magic in an earlier attempt with similar issues. This may be due to an out-dated version, not sure. I'm also using SATA drives.

At any rate, after the last shut down hang, things came up normally, and all is good now.

The only reason I didn't just install from scratch is that I had too many apps and things that I didn't want to fool around reinstalling.

The moral of the story is that with patience and the right software, it is possible to ghost a boot XP SATA drive with multiple partitions. It can be a learning experience if one is ready for it. On the other hand, here in Thailand a knowledgeable tech can probably do this kind of work for a reasonable price. I only took it on because I knew I could figure it out and didn't want to haul the machine across town.

UC

[JetsetBkk]

Rice king, i found the setting, it was on. I tried it set to off, it didnt work, set it back to on, it still didnt work....help!

Don't forget to "save" the BIOS settings before you exit...

[astral]

I would recommend a Seagate disk,

having had 2 Western Digital fail on me.

[sierra01]

Jet....yes I did F10 (save and exit), still numlock wont stay on.....big sigh.

Astral....It is a seagate, a barracuda, so is my old one....another big sigh.

Upcountry....I've upped from 80gig to 160gig, I was only using just over half the old drive anyway. I dont store much on my PC, anything I want to keep I store on DVD. My first ever PC's hard drive died on me and I lost a lot of important stuff, since then I've used CD's and now DVD's for storage. The story about your SATA drive is way to complicated for me, I have just about everything reinstalled now and found I didnt really need some of the programs from the old drive, they were just clutter!

Anyway, why won't my numlock stay on when I boot up? I've noticed the light comes on a couple of times during the boot up but is off when I come to sign in to my side of the computer, her indoors has an account on it too.

[JetsetBkk]

Jet....yes I did F10 (save and exit), still numlock wont stay on.....big sigh.

<snip>

Anyway, why won't my numlock stay on when I boot up? I've noticed the light comes on a couple of times during the boot up but is off when I come to sign in to my side of the computer, her indoors has an account on it too.

I can only think that there's a utility/service that is deliberately turning it off after the PC has booted.

There are ways to find out and change what is started on your PC after booting, e.g. System Configuration Utility, but I must go out now - haven't got time for detailed post.

Maybe you can think of/determine what is running and see if any of those processes has an option to turn off the numlock?

[onethailand]

DON'T START THE COMPUTER WITH BOTH HDD CONNECTED AFTER CLONING!

Reimar, i am aware of that warning but have done it a zillion times without any problems (i'm cloning my drive on a daily basis). could you explain why it is not advisable? thanks.

Because you will not know which drive has booted up unless you are familiar with the BIOS settings - and even then it's not always obvious as there is a boot sequence.

By removing the old drive before booting, you can be certain that your new drive has been set up properly. If not, simply put the old drive back in and then figure out where you went wrong.

[Upcountry]

My first ever PC's hard drive died on me and I lost a lot of important stuff, since then I've used CD's and now DVD's for storage. The story about your SATA drive is way to complicated for me, I have just about everything reinstalled now and found I didnt really need some of the programs from the old drive, they were just clutter!

Good strategy, sierra01!

[astral]

Astral....It is a seagate, a barracuda, so is my old one....another big sigh.

I am not saying Seagate do not fail, but I had 2 WD fail within the guarantee period.

Both time they were replaced without a quibble, but I cannot place any faith in the third final

disk, which is now out of guarantee.

I believe Seagate gives a 5 year, better than the 2 year of WD.

[sierra01]

Yes it has a 5 year guarantee, which is great but still a pain if the disk fails.

Without me doing anything else, apart from a few reboots through normal use, the numlock now comes on every time!

One final ( he says hopefully!) problem, when I right click and open in a new window it opens at about half size, not the full size if I open with the IE icon. Any ideas on this?