hard to install new hard drive?

tk1780 · June 3rd, 2002, 08:16 PM

As a novice, I was thinking about buying a new Hard drive online and upgrading my system. Actually taking out the old drive and installing the new drive and hooking up the connectors should be easy. But ...

Is it difficult to format and load windows?

Also, how do you do it with a blank hard drive?

Thanks

strangerstill · June 3rd, 2002, 08:31 PM

Someone will give a better reply than this, but may as well be the first!
Windows is perfectly happy to install onto a new blank drive. If you have a bootable CD (all newer versions of Windows) and a bootable CD drive then all you need to do is:
1. Set your BIOS to boot from CD
2. Turn on your PC with the Windows CD in the drive.
3. If your Windows CD is an 'upgrade' license then you may need to show it a previous version's CD
4. If your drive is totally blank it will need to be partitioned and formatted; Windows will do this.
5. Tell the Windows CD to install a new installation to your new hard drive.
With any luck it should all go smoothly and give you a new clean installation that will run a lot faster!

Tekk · June 3rd, 2002, 08:34 PM

Stranger is right

But I think if you tell us the OS you wanna put in we can better outline the steps. If its Win2k or even XP, its a simple process. 98 is just as easy but that usually requires you to partition the drive first using FDISK.

Dont wanna confuse ya just yet...what OS you wanna install ?

Inanis · June 3rd, 2002, 09:12 PM

If you want to install Windows 95/98/ME:

http://www.inanis.net/home/win9x.htm

obitis · June 3rd, 2002, 09:34 PM

why dont you just make the new one a slave?

all you need to do is plug it in and set the bios to recognize it as a slave it will take only as long to plug it in just about

joker_927 · June 3rd, 2002, 09:46 PM

Yea, you can always use extra space!

tk1780 · June 4th, 2002, 09:34 AM

Thanks for all of your help!

The drive would be an upgrade and I would use either Windows 98 or 98se. I have 98 running right now and made a windows cd from the Windows files on the hard drive since I only have a recovery disk.

I want the new hard drive to be the master because I want to boot from it. It should be faster than my current 10 GB 5400 rpm drive. I'm looking at a 40GB 7200 drive.

Any idea how long Windows 98 should take to boot?

Also, is there much difference between 98 and 98se?

Thanks everyone

Beemer · June 4th, 2002, 10:12 AM

Make sure you have the most current bios update for your mother board. You might have a problem with your BIOS recognizing more than 32gigs of that 40gig drive.

Cheers!