HARD drive replacement - difficult? have a site that walks you through it? | Forums

[dbuff]

i had a thread about determining a squeal noise and how pc didnt boot up and then it did boot up. it seemed general thought was it was fans.
SO

pulled fans and took to comp USA - the lead tech person told me they look ok to him.
i THEN told him about the squealing.

He said again that fans looked ok. was probably HArd Drive. So come back here to ask:

Is installing a Hard Drive too tough for a novice? Do you know of any GOOD how to's web sites for dummy like me. I have more money than time or knowledge, But dont want buy a new PC.

I am in Atlanta if anyone know a good shop if I have to go that route.

THANKS.

[B16Enk]

If money is not too much of an issue I recommend Norton Ghost it can be bought and downloaded on line.

Ghost will enable you to transfer the entire disk to a new disk, if it is your system disk it will make the new disk bootable (I would say it's an exact copy but it will transfer a smaller disk to a larger disk).

Documentation is pretty good.

Physically attaching the Disk is pretty straight forward too, all disk manufacturers will have details on their sites:

Western Digital have comprehensive details on the process.

You may be prompted to re-authorize your Windows however, it's pretty straight forward and may have to be done over the 'phone.

I will add that a hard disk will not, in my experience, 'squeal' when failing.

They normally make clicking noises and, in extreme circumstances, grinding noises.

The clicks can result in erratic disk function, the grinding in zero function.

Does your error log indicate any hard drive failures? (type 'eventvwr' in start->run) this will be under the 'system' section.

[dieg777]

Replacing a hard drive is relativly easy.
JUST BEWARE OF STATIC WHEN WORKING INSIDE CASE
The fit is usually a slide into a spare bay and secured by small screws.
you will have 2 connections - power and cable to motherboard.
The cable will probably have two black connections, the master drive must be fitted to end furthest from motherboard.The slave will be in middle connection.
In your current set up you might have your existing hard drive on master and cd/dvd player on middle as slave - in this case you will need a cable for new drive- these are usually supplied with drive.
The key is getting your jumpers set up. these are a set of pins on the back of the drive, by moving a tab or switches you can set your drive to be master or slave.
Now your current hard drive will be master on either ide 1 or ide 2. what you want to do is set your new drive up as a slave on either ide, copy your information from old drive to new then set your new drive up as master and then remove old drive.

You will get information on setting up jumpers either in documents that come with drive of on manufacturers web site e.g.

http://support.wdc.com/techinfo/installation.asp

by the way I recommend western digital but choice is yours.

To transfer your data from your old drive to new you need an image program such as norton ghost

for info on how to use ghost see here

http://ghost.radified.com/ghost_1.htm

for more info see here

http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=418

also see link to il2optimisation in my sig for more general info
good luck

[dieg777]

sh1t b16enk your fast and great minds seem to think alike

[dbuff]

b16enk -
I ran eventvwr - did not see anything that said was a harddrive failure. would that mean i am chasing a ghost here?