as my hard drive is now full i have bought a bigger one and just need to fit it. i have also bought an external hard drive to swap everything off my existing hard drive.
the actual fitting of the hard drive i can do,but i am not sure how to transfer everything between all the hard drives. can i transfer windows xp or do i need a disc to put it onto the new hard drive? what about all the other programs currently on my computer?

thanks

 

The external hdd is probably usb, its just a case of plugging that in and transfering everything like pics, files, movies etc over to that via drag and drop.

Why have you bought another internal hdd ????, i ask this as your going to transfer all your stuff to the external hdd which thus frees up all the space on the one thats full, why dont you fit the newer bigger drive as your 2nd drive for storage only and keep the drive you currently have for your os.

If you want to only have the one internal drive ie the newer bigger drive then youll need to freshly install your choice of windows onto it.

Dave.

 

Didn't know that was possible mate. At the moment the drive is split into c and d . So would have to make the existing drive into c and the new one into d. is that right?
so do I just physically fit the new drive into the machine and transfer all the photo's etc into it. how do I then unsplit the original drive?
sorry for all the questions.

 

drive D is more likely to be the CD/dvd drive bryan
whats old HD size? and whats size of new one?

you need to get the case open to check you have a slot free for the extra hard drive if there is the space then change the pin settings so the new drive is a slave and then connect the power plug (prob tied up somewhere) and ide ribbon cable that will be connected to your existing drive may have a extra connector in series that you can then use to connect to the slave drive.

if its just a case of running out of hard drive space then back up large files pictures ect onto the external hard drive as a habit.
what i do is regularly copy/paste my whole picture,movies/music folders onto the external drive and it just updates with any new files.
then worst case scenario you need to wipe computer you can get all your stuff back on easily.

can pm u my home number if you want talking through it mate

 

its an 80 gig hard drive thats in it allready dunc and its been split in 2 if that makes sense? local disc(c) and data(D) .c is where programs go and d is where pictures etc go at the moment. so i need to swap everything out of D to the new hard drive when i fit it,and then turn the whole 80gig hard drive into C if that makes sense? new hard drive is 250gig

i am pretty sure there is only one hard drive in there so fitting another one doesn't pose a problem, it's more the computer side of it than the mechanical side of it i will be getting stuck with. i'll let you know when it comes(royal mail are wank at the moment) and get your number off you. cheers

 

ahh its been partitioned ok that makes sense
you can regain the space for main drive by deleting the secondary partition after you have moved all files to the new slave drive
it will be a bit of pissing around and if u get it wrong when deleting partitions all the files are gone so make sure you back it up before doing anything.

also if the computer is running a bit slow ect this could be a great opportunity to start with a fresh install and just use the new hard drive leaving the old one as it is for the moment (2 min job to swap the drives over) as you all ready have the external HD as a extra slave is not really that important as you all ready have space to backup

 

taking the computer apart is easy if you want to swap the drivers over

whats not so easy is the arcane dark art that is doing software swapping over from one to the other

i'm pretty sure that you can only swap the actual files that you've put on, not the operating system, think of it like reshelling a car, you can't change the shell but you can do everytihng from it to the new one

it made sense to me anyway

 

ok. just come to fit this and it looks like i am missing a few bits. looks like i need 4 screws to mount it and a red data cable to go from it to the mother board.
the other thing is the power cable has the wrong end on it if that makes sense?
lookind at the existing hard drive the power cable plugs in on the far right hand side if your looking at the back of the hard drive, then the data cable a bit further a long,then there is another set of pins the same type as the data cable connection next to that. the new hard drive only has the data connection for the red cable and the other set of pins next to it. there is nothing at the far right hand side for the existing power cable to plug into?

edited to say just found a data cable and power adaptor cable on ebay for a couple of quid.
it also says on the hard drice it doesn't need switching between slave and master?

can you send me your landline number as well please dunc.

cheers.

 

have you got the correct hard drive in that case then?

ones a sata drive and the other is the other one with different connections to hook up for the power etc

 

data cable and power cable have now arrived so i fitted the hard drive. i can feel it powering up but can't find it on the computer?
it says on it that it doesn't need altering for slave/master etc. at the moment pins 1 and 2 are bridged. the data cable plugged into a spare slot on the mother board directly above the existing one. is there anything else i need to do to make it work or should it just appear when i click on my computer?
when i right click on my computer and click properties and then hardware it shows the two hard drives up,so it knows its there.