Need Helping Installing New Hard Drive!!

Hello,

Please assist me with the installation of an 18 gig hard drive..I need to know what it is I need to do as far as backing up the data from my existing hard drive...what is the necessary data already in my existing hard drive that I definitely have to back up and can I put this data on floppy....that's my 1st question...

 

Please someone help me...I need help installing an 18 gig hard drive....I need to know if there is any necessary data from my existing hard drive that I need to back up.....that's just my 1st question....PLEASE HELP!!!

 

Is there no one willing to assist me???

 

Do you want to be a little more specific in your upgrade plan.

Install new hard drive.

New master hard drive
New slave hard drive????

Do you plan on replacing your current hard drive with new one or just adding for additional capacity

 

I guess I'm adding capacity to what I already have...I'm new to this

 

If your just gonna add additional capacity then you will not have to back up any data. Jumper settings can be a little tricky, I can do them myself but I'll let someone more experienced explain them better like Brian.

 

I would defintely appreciate any assistance you guys can give me..

 

Hi, are you going to keep your current HD and just add the new one? Is the new one a new drive or one you got used? If you are adding the new one for storage only you wont need to back anything up unless you want to put your OS on the new one.
Mo

 

I'm really not sure which is the best way to do it...my old HD only has about 200 megs and I bought this brand new 18 gig HD, now I'm not sure if I should replace my old one or simply add the new one...that's where I'm lost...also, I'm not sure if I need to backup my data from my old HD...

 

You have two ide channels on your motherboard. Each channel can hold two devices.
Depending on what you have installed now you will need to determine which channel and in what position you will install the drive.
Your current hard drive will be installed as primary master.
You also have a primary slave along with a secondary master and slave. You can only have one master and one slave on one cable.
If nothing is connected to the cable the hard drive is on then use that.
Physically install the drive in the machine with the jumper on the back of the drive set to slave(if your connecting it on the same cable as the current hard drive, if on secondary ide you will need to set it to either master or slave depending on the device that is attached to it already)
Attach the ide ribbon with the red stripe aligned with the pin 1 marking on the drive. Attach a power connector, you should have extras inside your case.

Once that is done, reconnect the power cable, restart the machine, as it posts watch for the message to enter setup or start tapping the delete key, you need to enter cmos setup and go to the ide configuration menu. In this menu you will need to set the ide channel you just installed the drive to. Set it to auto detect, save and exit.

On the restart tap the F8 key to get the start up menu, choose command prompt.

You should see the drive recognized when you boot. If you only have one drive letter for hard drive now (c) then the new drive should be D. Type D: and hit enter, with any luck you will go to the d prompt.

Now you will need to go back to the c prompt by typing C: and hit enter.

Type fdisk and press enter, answer yes to the LBA question.

Choose option #4 to view partition info, check to make sure the new drive is shown and the correct size. Note the drive number or partition identification.
If the drive is correct you will need to partition and format it.
Back at the main fdisk menu, I beleive one of the selections is to change drives, choose that one, make sure you choose the new drive and not the old.
Once you have the correct drive selected choose option #1, create primary dos partition, make if for 100% of the drive size.

Once that is done you will need to reboot and go to the command prompt again, type D: and press enter. This should be your new drive. Type dir and press enter to make sure it's not your c drive, you new drive won't have any directories or files on it.
If it's correct type format D: and press enter. You may need to go back to the c prompt and type Format D:.

Here is a link to fdisk and format for you to read and help with the process

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q255867

 

If you want to change and use the new one as the primary most of the above is correct.
You will need to download the installation software from the manufacturers web site if it didn't come with the drive. The installation software will allow you to copy your old drive to the new drive while the new drive is connected as a slave. Once that is done, you need to physically change the jumpers on the drives, the new one would be master on the primary ide, the old could be slave(you could reformat it at a later time and use if for storage or backup)

 

I really appreciate the assistance guys, I've printed the info you gave me an I'm off to see how this works....if I have problems...well I don't know what I'll do, but I guess if I follow your instructions I should be fine...again thanks...