I am a PC novice e.g turn it on, it works, that's all I need to know. However, the hard drive is making a lot of strange whining noises (about 3 years old now, built by a work mate o not a specific brand) and I would like to try and replace it myself with something more powerful etc.

Not sure how to copy everything before installing the new one so I don't lose anything. Any help would be much appreciated.

 

Are you sure it's the hard drive making the noise and not one of the fans?

Replacing the hard drive is fairly striaghtforward, but you first need to know if your motherboard will support the size of drive you intend purchasing.

There are several options to transferring everything to the new drive. Which method you choose depends on whether:
- this is the only hard drive in your machine,
- you have a CD or DVD writer to back up data (pics/music/docs etc)
- you have install discs for all programmes you want to continue using.

The "recommended" method is to back-up all data to another drive or a CD/DVD, then do a fresh install of the operating system (including all service packs or patches) followed by reinstalling the programmes/applications you want on there (ditto service packs and patches) and finally put data back from the backups. This method is recommended as it will clear all of the junk that you would havew accumulated.

Alternately you could use programs like Norton (now Symantec) Ghost or DriveCopy to transfer everything from one drive to the other. Much quicker but you retain all the crap. To use this method, you have to change a jumper* on the existing drive to make it a slave drive, fit the new drive setting it as Master then run Ghost/Drive copy and transfer everything from the slave to the master.

*Many drives/PCs now use Cable Select to determine which is slave/master, so you would move the existing drive to the second connector and fit the new one to the first connector (after checking that the jumper is set to the CS position)

Whichever method you choose, take the precaution of backing up all data first.

 

I'm not an expert, but if I were in the same position I would create an image of the drive, using software like "Drive Image" and then install the second drive. Once up and running I would restore the image of the failing drive to the new drive and then plug the second drive into the primary IDE connector on the motherboard. Provided this worked, the old drive could then be removed and binned.

I think the only way to get your operating system, installed software and data files across to your new hard disk is to do an image and restore.

Good luck and hope someone more experienced posts the correct solution!

Suresh

 

personaly

i would buy a new drive, fit it, and re install the OS

and use the second one as a slave so i had all my old stuff available to transfer across when i felt like it

 

I'll have a look at the instructions that came with the motherboard - I assume it needs a slot (?) to fit the new drive into or I can't do the slave thing with the old one?

Thanks for the advice...

 

I'm assuming by the age this is an EIDE drive. There will be a ribbon cable running from the back of the drive to the motherboard. If you're lucky there will be another connector on the cable with nothing attached. If there is something attached, then there should be another similar ribbon running off the motherboard to another drive (CD or DVD). Note that the cable running to the floppy drive is separate and differnent.

The sockets on the motherboard that the hard drives and CD/DVDs plug into are IDE ports. Each allows two devices to be plugged into it. As long as you have three or less devices then you have a spare port (i.e. un-used connector on a ribbon) somewhere which can be used. Look at the back of the drive connected to the same cable as the spare port: there's a set of four pairs of pins with a jumper on one pair of them (unless it's a Western Digital drive, in which case there may not be a jumper). On the top of the drive, or next to the pins, is a diagram that something like: "CS, MA, SL" = Cable Select, Master, Slave. If the existing drive is set to CS, then set the new one to CS. If it set to MA or SL, then set the new drive to the opposite. Plug the power and IDE cables in and power up. Check BIOS can see them both (they should be listed on the screen during boot. Then check if Windows can see them.

Finally, use something like Ghost to copy the drive contents as above.


M