Hard drive installation

[apsphotography]

Good evening everybody,

Can anybody give me information on hard drive installation.
have just bought a new system and want to install another hard drive.
i am not very technical with computers if anybody has any information: links etc i would be most grateful

thank you

[es136]

here is 2 links.

good luck

eddie

http://www.pcworld.com/howto/article/0,aid,47370,00.asp

http://www.makeitsimple.com/sections.php?op=printpage&artid=6

[apsphotography]

thanks eddie i will try them

[Swampy]

Either one of those articles should work, however, they're long.

So, in short, here's the jist.

You can have two IDE devices on 1 cable, a master and a slave. With that in mind, you'll need to find out if the current IDE device is a Master or Slave and set the new drive to the opposite.

Hopefully, your bios will autodetect the new drive, if not, you'll need to go into the bios and set it for auto on that IDE channel and device.

Install the drive. Boot the computer to Windows 2000/XP. Right click on My Computer, go to Manage, Disk Management and you should see a drive there that doesn't have a partition. Right click on it and create a primary simple parition. Assign a drive letter to it (right click on that partition to do that). Quick Format it and that's it. If you have the time, Use Format, not Quick Format just to be 100% safe that the drive is good. Quick Format has never failed me with a new drive however.

There ya go. A quicker not so step by step instruction. If you need more, then by all means, check out the other links above. :)

[apsphotography]

thanks swampy

you're a very knowledgable chap

[robinp]

If you go to PC World and buy a hard drive in a pretty box (rather than one in a plain white or brown box), it will come with screws, ide cable and full installation instructions.

Cheers, Robin

[Bill C]

Of course, the easiest may be to purchase an external drive (USB 2.0 or firewire)....depending on the OS, may be very painless. I purchased a 80GB Maxtor external on sale at OfficeMax ... plugged it in, and XP recognized it right away ... no pain!!
BIll

[globug]

If anybody's computer illiterate it is I, and I just installed a 160 g external hard drive on my MAC. I erroneously bought one that was somehow formatted to be plug and play for a pc (vice mac), so I had to call tech support (its a la Cie). However they talked me through in about 45 seconds. Its been working like a charmer since then.
If you decide to get an external hard drive and its formatted for your PC then it really is a plug and play deal. If you're putting it inside, I readily bow to knowledge and instructions of Swampy.
Globug

[apsphotography]

thank you everybody for your advice.

I have today sucessfully installed a 120gig hard drive into my new system, along side the existing 80gig. it works a treat.

thank you all once again

steve

[jknights]

Well done.

I was going to suggest that if you wanted to call me as IT is my line of work. Much easier than talking to the 'people' at some of the uK PC shops !!

[apsphotography]

thanks jonathan,

thats very kind of you i will remember that in the future.


steve