Fighting Irish Forums

My PC is about 3 years old and the hard drive is starting to show it's age - knocking noises when I switch on and then still making loud humming noises.

I intend to replace now - before it goes bang - but I am a bit of a Luddite so any tips on how to do it would be gratefully received.

Machine is a Dell Dimension 4500, with an 80GB drive. Questions are:
1. Can I fit another drive in the case and back up the data on to the new drive?
2. If yes, how technical is this?
3. Am I better of taking it to the local computer store - but I am a bit nervous about security of banking details etc?

All help gratefully received.

Not too familiar with DELL products.

I've done what you speak of several times in the past with good results.

Install the new drive as a SLAVE. Make your primary (your current disc) the MASTER. Do this by setting the "jumper" pins on your harddrives as indicated by the little diagram near the place where the jumpers go. Some machines require "cable select" as the setting. Observe what slot the jumper is in at the moment and choose accordingly. "Cable Select" lets the machine choose which disc to boot from.

Make sure you have BOTH discs on the same IDE cable. The MASTER should be at the end of the cable and the SLAVE attached to to middle connector of the dual IDE cable.

Boot up and let your machine recognize the new configuration. You should now see another drive letter D:, E:, or some such.

Now you can use your disc manager to format or partition your new drive. ( if you want to ).

Next, right click your C: and click COPY. Go to your new drive, right click, and hit PASTE. GO drink a few beers and hopefully everything on your C: will now be on your new drive.

You should test it before you call it a done deal. Simply unplug your C: and see if the machine will boot and everything will run like it should.

IF and when it does. move the new drive to end of the cable, set the jumper for MASTER or single and compute on.

Go online to DELL and they have diagrams to assist you. Also post in the Dell user forums about this upgrade for further insight.

TS!

Thanks for the response guys.

I have ordered a Seagate Barracuda 7200 120GB, cost about £55.

I will let you know how I get on - assuming I can get the computer to work afterwards of course

Must admit I'd take a slightly different approach.

Assuming you had a bootable operating system disk, i.e. it will boot from something other than the hard drive I'd take the old disk out and put the new in as the master hard drive and then use the bootable operating system disk to install the OS and all other software from scratch.

With the old hard disk back in as a slave to the master disk, you could copy data files etc back across. As to whether I'd keep it as a slave I don't know... if it sounds as on it's last legs as you suggest, I would not want to risk keeping anything of note on it even as a secondary disk

Before doing anything though, back up your important stuff to CD!!

G

Roger on the back up to CD.

I have an XP CD so presumably it will boot from that?

Willies proposal sounds less painful, but I guess there is a lot to be said for a nice clean install of XP?

The drive arrived in the post this morning so wish me luck!

Test to see if it boots from CD first... it will prompt to install so you can abort anyway.

Insert CD, turn PC off and turn it on again.

You should get an option as the BIOS loads (before the existing O/S kicks in) saying something anlong the lines of "press any key to boot from CD"

If you don't, then go into your BIOS setup. Somewhere in there should be a list of boot devices (CD/floppy/Hard drive) snd the order in which the BIOS implements them. Just make your CD is before the hard disk so it looks there first.

...and dont forget to backup ypu mail programmes/pst files first...and tripple check that the backup has all the files too!

G

Nel,

I concur with Gurb, back up all personnal files first to a CD. Don't forget your address book and favorites from your browser. An other option (in addition to CD's) is to backup to an external drive. I ruetinely back -up personnal files (finance, tax files, address books, music, photos) to the external drive.
After you have good back-ups, remove the old drive, install the new, go down town, pick up a few six packs, install the new operating system with updates, install new virus software with updates, scan new drive, install the rest of you applications, go down town, get more beer, restore your personnal stuff. Never/ever/no way do a low level format!

Igor

Nellip,
West Midlands is that west of Midland Texas? Just joking. Remember, when replacing a hard drive, its very importatant to back up to CD's and external drives. Most important, don't forget the beer, because its an all weekend job.

Igor

Gurb's idea is the best.

I rarely had the luxury of a CD with an OS on it until recently. Hence I learned to make do with what I had.

I have thought about partioning my next install and delegating a smaller portion of the drive for the OS and the rest for programs and such. My thinking is, in the event of an OS crash, it might be easier to keep the proggies installed and simply re-install the OS.

Is my thinkin off?

I do have my IL2 on its' own dedicated 10G partition of my 160G WD that also houses my secondary stuffs.. My C: is a 60 G.

I use a 6-partition hard disk primarily for organization and reduction of fragmentation.

With the exception of my H: used exclusively for data backup/storage (downloads of programs/game patches), I don't think this will necessarily help with regards to re-installing. I suppose if you kept a backup of you registry, you might be able to not have to re-install programs and games, but then again these things install stuff in the OS's directory and sub-directories in addition to the registry.

Best solution might be to backup a clean install to a spare hardrive, and use that to re-install. However, how long will this backup be worthwhile?

Regards,
TactS!

I think I had come down in favour of doing it the hard way also - that is reinstalling the OS on the new drive as master and then using the old as slave to copy files and programmes across.

I had also concluded it is a weekends job so will wait until then to start - beers are in the fridge

Chances of me flying on Sunday evening are not great................

isn't it easier to put new drive into pc divide it to partitions using pq magic or some linux clones of it,
make ghost of ye old operating system to 2nd partition on new drive
switch the jumpers master to slave (optional), run(boot from) the ghost floppy or cd and make it "restore" partition on the new hdd when new system is fully operation move/copy data from old to new one
show him strings to your e-mail box folder etc
after aprox 0,5-1hour done (it goes faster after , at least is more pleasurable)

ps. you know that restoring system/disk after crash takes about 15mins? no reinstaling activating xps etc

I know why I always dread doing this stuff.............

I downloaded a copy of Norton Ghost to make a clone of my existing drive - the IT manager at work reckoned that was the easist way.

So far so good, but when I start delving into the PC innards it seems my hard drive/motherboard is ATA and the new drive is SATA so I need a power cable adaptor (no great problem, cost about £2) but I also need a spare PCI slot to connect a SATA host adaptor to connect the new drive to (cost about £20).

The way this is looking I might bite the bullet and invest in a new PC!

Sounds like time for another beer...........

maybe it would be better just to exchange hdd in the shop? easier at least

I am not sure about that urge to replace whole pc unit... I belive it is much more expensive than 20£ ... if it works... the games you like run on it satisfactionarily

maybe there are some internal usb adapters also?

maybe some cleaning of the disk from unused stuff and full defragmentation would help your disk to start easier?

if it is still making some noise i hope you had made back up of crucial data...