Need Help Installing a Hard Drive
 

I'm replacing the main hard drive in my HP desk top and dont really have a clue what I'm doing. Do I need some special cables or do I basically mount the new drive, set the jumpers and have a recovery disc in the rom? What happens when I start the computer with the new hard drive?

HELP!!

and why are you doing this yourself if you have no clue?

Dont ask stupid questions son.

well first off are you using IDE, SATA, or SCSI?

stand back, the disc could blow an severely injur someone in the room. Make sure everyone is wearing eye protection.

you will need to install OS :winkwink:

Its just a cheap Best Buy hard drive

lol doesnt matter price or where you got it, need to know the type of drive. Meaning the adapter it uses to interface with the motherboard.

not sure, definately not a scsi

i guess it's IDE or SATA... but they uses different interfaces to connect to your motherboard... so we need to know which one is yours

I find it crazy that you joined in 2001 (been a webmaster or in the online biz) and can't change a Hard Drive .. lol

I'm not laughing at you . I'm not that great tech wise either but i would think you'd know the basics .. :)

I always pay people to do the work, this time I want to do it myself.

pay someone, save you the heartache of losing data or hours of frustration.

I've had a few drinks and I feel crazy!

tigerdirect.com have a few tuts you can use

Thanks I may use that. I suppose I could throw the new one in and then see what happens

it's really simple, make sure the jumpers on the back is set correctly (says on the box) and then just connect it to the cables that you have originally unless you're dealing with sata, and boot up, if you get the bios, you're home free.

lol make it easy on yourself and just pay someone to do it. If you have no idea what kind of drive you bought then how the hell do you know if it will work in your computer?

Perfect. If I dont get the bios...out the window it goes!

i usually go to compusa, the techs there are really good, they can direct you to installing it, just tell them you bought it in the store, and it doesn't work, and they'll walk you through it.

so true, but once he gets the hang of it, it will be worth the investment to learn.

When you unplug the old drive, just plug yours back in the same way and fire it up with your recovery cd in the cd drive. If you have xp, your fine.
If it doesnt see your drive, then you may have to set the jumper.
Lets plug it in first and go from there, and be careful not to bend any pins in the plug and don't tear your ide cable when you unplug it from the old drive.

If you don't have it installed by Monday, call me at my shop and I will walk you throgh it if you need help. Go to pcdude.com to get the contact info and ask for Tom.

was thinking the same thing...

sounds easy enough, I'm just in the process of burning the recovery discs.

If you dont mind, the big boys are talking right now. Run along now would ya.

that seems the easiest explanation :thumbsup

Assuming this is a second hard drive for added storage...

If it came with a thin (but wide width) gray wire - IDE -

Hook the drive up to the same wire in your computer that is already attached to your current drive. There should be an open black plug available on it. Read the manual to see if you'll need to change the jumper for it to be a slave drive.

If it came with a smaller red wire - SATA -

Hook that up to your new drive and hook the other end where it fits into the motherboard. You can't really mess this up. Just find where it fits.

If your old drive is an SATA and your new one is an IDE -

Use the wide gray cable it came with and plug that into your motherboard. Should say "Primary IDE" or something next to where you plug it in.

Must be for a new primary drive then. You may want to have both drives anyway. And if this was for added space then you won't need to reinstall everything.

Its actually going to be the main drive

If it is an IDE drive ( big large flat cable ... :1orglaugh ), and if it is the only drive on that cable, set the jumper to master and connect the end connector to the drive.

If you have an XP disk, just boot up, hit del, go into Bios and set it to boot from CD. Reboot, cd will take over the system, accept the install, format the drive as NTFS and so on ...

I never use recovery disk... sorry.


If SATA, pay somebody. :2 cents:

OMG OMG, heh

I apologize for all the lame answers on this thread :1orglaugh

You have ide, you simply take out the old one and reconnect the cables to the new one. I usually mount it first then connect the cables.

From there have to do a fresh installation of I assuming windows xp if you don't have the install disk for your os then you have to buy a copy from some place like newegg.com

Once you install the new os re-install your software and set up your emails and browser links from scratch. all your information will be lost so make sure you write down any passwords or stuff you really need. You may want to burn your emails, favorites, and text docs to a cd so you put them back on the system.

Good luck, you can do it. :thumbsup

Your computer run faster then ever since it's fresh and you will have a better hard drive.