Transfering HDD

OK, here is the problem. My inlaws hard drive crashed so I went out and bought them a new one. Their computer is a 200 MHZ made in 1996. The hard drive I bought was to big (40 Gig) so I am going to trade the 10 Gig in my computer for the 40 Gig. I have already installed the new hard drive (40 Gig) in my computer and need to know how to make it the master and remove my old one (hopefully already formated and ready to go for my inlaws computer.) Then I also need help on installing the 10 Gig into my inlawas computer. Any help would be great.

Thanks Habu.

 

If your talking about transferring your old drives contents to the new drive the drive manufacturer should have software on their web site or included with your drive to copy the original to the new. Then all you do is rejumper the drives master for new, slave for old if there both on primary ide cable

As far as your old drive
Just install it in the computer, boot up with a startup disk and format it, unless you want to partition it then you would need to fdisk it.

 

First Backup any files you need just in case.
Fit the new drive as a slave (it will show the jumper settings on a lable on the drive)
You might have to set the jumper on the old drive (some drives have differnt settings for Master and Master with Slave.
Or you could fit the new drive as a Master or slave on your secondary IDE.
Fdisk and format the new drive (no real need to partition.)
Now copy all the files from your old drive to the new.
To do this first double click on My computer then on your C drive.
check in the View pull down.Folder options that all files are viewed.
on the edit pulldown select all.
deselect the windows swap file
Go to your new drive and paste.
remove the old drive and refit the new drive as master.
reboot checking your bios is correct for the new drive.
All should work. If I've not forgotten something.

 

You are best off using the image software provided with the drive manufacture. The problem with copying in windows is you can't copy files that are in use so once you got to the windows directory you would have a whole bunch of problems. If you don't want to use the software you have to do it from dos, but you should use the software. Also, if you want to partition you should. Smaller partitions use smaller clusters thus less slack space. If you want I can go on about slack space but I will spare you. Anyway, one 40 GB partition does not equal two 20 GB partitions. The two 20 GB ones should yield an average of 4 GB more. If you want three partitions then you can get even more from the drive. The only problem with many partitions is unless you have software like Partition Magic then you are stuck with the partitions you made. When you use the image software you have an option to split the drive into different partitions. Once you are done you can take out the 10 GB, reformat it and jumper back to slave and put it in the 200 Mhz. Also, if you are planning to use a cd-rom or any other kind of device while you have both drives in then you should have both HD on the primary IDE. Hard drives and things like cd-roms don't share an IDE very well.

 

First, Thanks to those of you who helped me out I have the 40 Gig up and running. Now to work on the 10 Gig. Do I absolutely need to reformat it? Will I be able to run it in the computer just like it is? I have no Idea where to start on this thing so if I could get some step by step instructions, it would be very helpful. Thanks again for all the great help.

 

Habu excuse me for maybe not reading well but are you installing a 2 harddrives into 1 pc?

 

Hi Habu, welcome to TSG.

In reality, you can put the hard drive into their computer. I'm assuming you already have it removed from your computer and just sitting there awaiting further instructions?

If so, you are probably going to have some hardware conflicts upon startup, but nothing that can't be overcome.

Another issue you may encounter, depending on the bios of the older computer, you may need to install the software overlay from the floppy disk that came with your new hard drive.

 

Yep... as AcaCandy said you can use it in the 200 Mhz... you'll just have some problems to take care of first. Depending on what OS you have it might fix some of them on the first startup. Among other things... you will need the manufacture's dirvers on hand (either on disc or download them) for the video, sound, the HD installation software (that one you might not need) and drivers for anything other hardware that is in the 200 Mhz computer.

 

Again before I start, let me say thanks to all that have contributed. I feel like we almost have this thing running which is a good feeling. I installed the hard drive (the 10 Gig) and the computer started up, showed the windows 98 screen and then I get a blank screen. Does anybody know what this means? I have no problem reformating the hard drive if that is what it will take, I just don't know how. Hope you guys can help.

 

Start the machine in safe mode, then remove all the system devices and reboot, let windows reinstall them,

Like this
First boot into SafeMode. To get into SafeMode, restart the PC. Now after the drives are recognized
on the screen but before the W98 splash screen, start tapping the F8 key. You should get the
startup menu with 6 options. Take the option for SafeMode. Now click on
Start>Settings>CP>System>DeviceManager. Scroll down and click on the "+" next to
"SystemDevices". Now remove them all and reboot. Also, if you had any onboard devices like
sound, video or a modem with the prior MB, be sure they are removed, too. And also remove any
"old" devices you might still see listed in DeviceManager.

Now click on Start>Shutdown>Restart and let Windows boot into Normal mode and reinstall the
devices. Have your CD for the motherboard and the W98 CD available in case your prompted for
them by W98.

 

You guys here are unbeliveable. Everything you said helped out and both systems are up and running. Thanks a ton. The only other question I have is about a driver that the system did not find for what I think is the modem (haven't tried to get on line yet). The driver not found was Multi Tech Sys MT5634ZPW. I looked this up at the multi tech home page and says it is driverless? This is new to me. He are the install instructions I found on the net, but I don't understand them. Thanks in advance.

 

driver (win95) here
http://www.multitech.com/SUPPORT/drivers/drivers_type.asp