mega_stream

Easy to fit, either run it on its own ide cable or set the jumpers on the back of the drive to slave and run it off an existing ide cable (most have 2 connectors on) If you ain't got a spare drop me a mail and I can sort one out if you get stuck.

You will have to re-install all your games and apps though m8, can't just move the files, windows will get very p1ssed if you do!

Good luck

[Edited by mega_stream - 7/2/2002 9:48:47 PM]

lumby

I am currently in process of buying a new harddrive to increase capacity of machine , presently 20gb now nearly used so need to fit a new hard disk/drive.

i have some games on the machine and they take up a lot of memory .

Once the new hard disk/drive is installed can I simply cut and paste the program file folder from the c drive which contains the games, to the new drive , as I/children keep adding add ons to the games, which will mean the exisitng c drive won't be able to cope .By transferring to the new hard disk it will free up loads of space for the other programs and the new drive can then be used for the games alone .

or Do the games have to be fully installed on the new drive ?

help appreciated as I am totally lost ?

Will a 60GB hard disk be too much for a 20GB machine the machine itself is only 18 months old?

Is it an easy enough task to fit the new hard drvie to the computer tower , will I need extra cabling ?

Thanks

lumby

Megastream thanks for the reply

Can I pick your brains further ?

Some of the games have downloads add ons eg the SIMs from the internet. The reinstall on the original games dosn't have these . How would I transfer these , do I need to do a back up or once the original game is installed can i simply copy the internet add on folders into the game on the new drive ?

Also the machine comes with windows millenium wil I have to install this on to the new hard disk also ?

Hope this makes sense

lumby

Ps what is an IDE cable ??

Thanks in advance

super_si

Prob best off using the 60gb as the primary then the other as the slave

IDE cables the grey cables youll noticed inside connectioning the cd rom exist hd etc

Depending on case get the bigger ones 75cm mine are.

Also when putting then in youll noticed little grey things at the end there jumpers

should be master slave something else

Set the 60gb to master and attact it to the end of the IDE cable, set the 20gb to Slave and put it on the next conector further down.

Then install the operating system on C:\(60gb) then your away

Si

MrDeference

I would pop down to PC World and pick up a copy of Norton Ghost (about £40).
You can use that to copy the entire contents of your old disk to your new disk. That way your entire existing setup has been migrated to the new disk, and all you need to do is set it as the master and it should work fine. Then you can set the old drive to slave and use that as D:.
The advantage is that you shouldn't have to reinstall anything - just use Ghost to move it.
Think of the £40 as an investment in saving you hours of hitting your head against the monitor when trying to reinstall.

lumby

Cheers Mr Defence that does sound so much simpler .

The only thing that still confuses me is the master and slave thing, presumably once i take the side panel off the tower , i swap the existing hard disk for the new one and that becomes the master and use the factory holder for additional hard drive for the old hard drive this then becoming d drive.

thanks

super_si

nar theres jumper settings on the hard drive that tell it, master or slave, youll see when you buy it or look in the pc

Also buy offline tons cheaper

Si

MrDeference

Yeah. IDE connects all the devices like Hard drives and CDRoms.

Your IDE cable will be a gray ribbon with a red stripe on one side and will need to have 3 black connectors on it. If you only have two, shout and mega_stream will sort you out with a 3 connector cable. You will be connecting the two Hard drives to the computer with one cable - so you will need to set one drive as master and one as slave.

Power off but leave PC plugged in - touch the case before touching the drive to earth yourself.
Remove case cover.
Set new drive to slave. (At the back of the drive is a set of small black connectors which you can move around. The instructions should be clearly silkscreened on the actual drive.)

Connect to IDE cable.
Plug in a spare power connector.

Fire up computer with Ghost floppy in drive (to prevent windows from loading).
Ghost the contents of the old drive to the new drive.

Switch off PC.
Change old drive to slave and new drive to master.
Power up computer.
Fingers crossed that windows loads (quicker than before Hurrah ).

If you are sure everything is OK, you can format the old drive (which is hopefully drive D now).

Hope that helps...

InvisibleMan

Yep Norton Ghost - excellent & very easy to use

Hos

iTrader: (1)

just on a side note and not related but i was looking for an extra hard disk with over 100gb for music/games downloads.

People on scooobynet helped me find it.
You can get them to connect via USB/USB 2/Firewire or i link..
Just an alternative for you. I went with maxtor 3000XT 160gb in the end.

Maxtor
http://www.maxtordirect.com/product.asp?sku=1864639

Icecube
http://www.pc500.net/productview.php...e=020502155602

Dr Nick

Dear Lumby,

Don't be offended when I say you sound a bit inexperienced regarding the innards of your PC. If this is true then the Drive Ghost suggested is probably the simplest option.

However, When I buy a new hard disc I use this as the opportunity for a fresh install.

Over the months/years I tend to install stuff which I later dont want and remove. As time goes by generally my PC seems to get less stable. I attribute this to the remnants of the installations and removals. If you are not noticing any stability problems then again the Drive Ghost prob may be the best option if you don't mind spending 40 quid.

I have a few games with saves that I don't like to loose when I reinstall my software so I back up the saved games parts of the game to CD before doing the new installation. Usually this works and the games run fine afterwards. But there is no set way do go about this you just have to know which files to copy. You will of course be helped by the fact that teh saved files have to have a date after the date you installed the game. This is quite a give away. Game mods can usually be reinstalled along with your reinstallation provided you back up the patch .exe file onto CD before you start.

Until you reformat your old hard disc you can always go back and have another crack at copying the right game files again if it does not work the first time.

Just on installing a new HDD. Usually this is very easy. There are currently three common options for setting up a new drive that involved changing the jumpers as described above.

1. Drive is master no slave present
2. Drive is master slave is present
3. Drive is slave - there has to be a master present.

Most PCs these days can support 4 hard drives (the CD drive counts as a hard drive in this scenario)

So you already have two drives most probably.

When you look in your case see if the hard drive and the CD rom are connected to the same ribbon cable.

If this is the case then you probably have the hard drive set as master with slave present and the CD rom as the slave

If they are on separate ribbon cables then they are probably both set as master (no slave).

If the latter is true and you intend to set your new drive as master but keep the old one as slave then you will need to change the jumpers on both your old and new drives.

If the former is true then you may need to change the jumpers on the CD drive as well.

This may sound complicated but the jumper patterns are always shown on the casing of the drive and in the manual too if you still have it.

From experience I can tell you that setting the jumpers wrong will not cause your PC to explode. It just won't recognise some or all of the drives.

Hope you find this of some use and it does not put you off.

Cheers

super_si

mines 8 never knew i could use the raid connections for normal IDE devices

Off the subject

ive Hard drive, Cd rom, floppy, Internal Zip n Super disk

would transferes be quicker if they each had a channel?

druddle

I had this same problem a year or so ago.

I had a 1.5 yr old Fujitsu Siemens PC with a 30Gb disk in, with a c: partition of 5gb and the rest a d: partition. I wanted to keep all my MP3s on another disk as d: was running out of space.

So i installed a 66gb disk, making sure I set the jumpers on the new disk so that it was a slave device, and plugged it into a spare IDE channel on the motherboard.

Powered it up, created a new filesystem called e: on it for the whole disk and then it was away !

I had to deinstall some games and apps from the c: so i could reinstall them on d: to free up some space on c: - its a pain as like you i had to redownload some addons but c'est la vie.

One tip to help your PC run better, if you have a second drive installed it is always a good idea to put the Windows virtual memory file on a different disk to the Windows install, then the PC will spend less time waiting for the same disk heads to go to the 2 locations on disk for what could be 2 critical tasks. That way, you can carry out virtual memory activity as well as doing other tasks at the same time and the only bottleneck is your IDE channel, which eill not be as bad as your disk (unless you have 2 disks on different IDE channels !!)

Hope thats clear (as mud )

Dave

gregh

btw my 2 hard drives have a cable select jumper, which means you don't have to worry about slave/master etc. I just set mine both to cable select.

regards,

greg

lumby

Crikey thanks for the replies

yes this is all new to me , hence the help requested thanks again !