Help installing Hard drive please
- Subscribe to RSS Feed
- Mark Topic as New
- Mark Topic as Read
- Float this Topic for Current User
- Bookmark
- Subscribe
- Printer Friendly Page
- Plusnet Community
- :
- Forum
- :
- Other forums
- :
- Tech Help - Software/Hardware etc
- :
- Help installing Hard drive please
Help installing Hard drive please
13-08-2007 12:30 PM
- Mark as New
- Bookmark
- Subscribe
- Subscribe to RSS Feed
- Highlight
- Report to Moderator
Re: Help installing Hard drive please
13-08-2007 12:44 PM
- Mark as New
- Bookmark
- Subscribe
- Subscribe to RSS Feed
- Highlight
- Report to Moderator
I think Step 5 is what you want
Re: Help installing Hard drive please
13-08-2007 1:07 PM
- Mark as New
- Bookmark
- Subscribe
- Subscribe to RSS Feed
- Highlight
- Report to Moderator
Formatting disk now but it looks like its going to take a long long time......
Regards
Mike
Re: Help installing Hard drive please
13-08-2007 1:09 PM
- Mark as New
- Bookmark
- Subscribe
- Subscribe to RSS Feed
- Highlight
- Report to Moderator
Re: Help installing Hard drive please
13-08-2007 1:16 PM
- Mark as New
- Bookmark
- Subscribe
- Subscribe to RSS Feed
- Highlight
- Report to Moderator
I wouldn't bother putting your applications on the new drive, just us ethe old one for Windows and programs and the new one for data. You can't just copy programs over as things like registry settings and data storage will not be setup correctly. They would have to be installed properly.
Re: Help installing Hard drive please
13-08-2007 1:23 PM
- Mark as New
- Bookmark
- Subscribe
- Subscribe to RSS Feed
- Highlight
- Report to Moderator
With respect to data - if you right click on the My Documents icon on your desktop you can select the move option and it will move all your data to the new drive if that's what you want.
Re: Help installing Hard drive please
13-08-2007 1:38 PM
- Mark as New
- Bookmark
- Subscribe
- Subscribe to RSS Feed
- Highlight
- Report to Moderator
The longer duration of the ‘Full Format’ is caused by the software doing a bad sector scan on the entire hard disk. As can be seen from the Microsoft document found here http://support.microsoft.com/kb/302686 it does not delete any files from your disk (that’s why the security services love Microsoft).
Regards, P.
Re: Help installing Hard drive please
13-08-2007 2:09 PM
- Mark as New
- Bookmark
- Subscribe
- Subscribe to RSS Feed
- Highlight
- Report to Moderator
by the look of it it will take 4+ hours to format....
Re: Help installing Hard drive please
13-08-2007 3:10 PM
- Mark as New
- Bookmark
- Subscribe
- Subscribe to RSS Feed
- Highlight
- Report to Moderator
The nice thing about having a big second drive is that you can make an image backup of your smaller system drive. Well worth doing if you have the space!
Re: Help installing Hard drive please
13-08-2007 7:15 PM
- Mark as New
- Bookmark
- Subscribe
- Subscribe to RSS Feed
- Highlight
- Report to Moderator
Sorry we went off on a bit of a tangent for you there. I’ll try and explain as best I can and see if the fog clears for you.
With a blank drive a number of things have to happen before you can use it, first it has to be ‘initialised’ this is often done by the manufacture (as was yours) but can be done by Windows. Sometimes when you add a new drive it looks to the system like a CDROM and you get no black band to click on and set up your partitions, in that case you right click on the drive icon and the pop up window will give you the option to ‘initialise’ the drive (not applicable in your case so don’t worry).
Next you have to partition the drive either using a standalone partition manager or Windows’s own built in manager. Then you have to format the partitions. For the first time use you should use a Full Format of the partition(s), this puts down the initial FAT table (File Allocation Table), makes a copy and stores this just after the original and then does a full sector by sector scan of your hard disk (or partition) for errors and maps them to the error map stored on your drive (it should find none on a new drive as they should already be mapped but it’s better to be safe than sorry). You can use a Quick Format but I agree with God and Peter better to spend the time now than curse later (and I’ve been doing this from when drives were MFM and RLL and you had to set interleaving and stuff).
So what happens when you have data on your drive and you do a format? Well the format command first makes a copy of the FAT and stores this as a hidden file right at the very end of your hard disk (ever wondered why you can never use the final 8 meg on your hard disk) then it overwrites the initial FAT (it often ignores the second copy) and if you are using the Full Format it does a new bad sector scan of the hard disk (well the partition your formatting actually but that is splitting hairs). It leaves all the file data intact on your drive and suitable software can retrieve the files and data and even do an ‘Un-format’ of the entire partition. My very old copy of Norton Utilities could un-format a partition in no-time by just copying back the hidden file and bang all was good as new (users thought I was God in them days).
That is why when you recycle your old computer you should always run a ‘disk scrubber’ type application on the hard disk to completely destroy all data and files on the drive before parting with it.
I hope the fog is a little clearer now, regards, P.
Edit: even the spell checker in Word can't spell
Re: Help installing Hard drive please
13-08-2007 9:32 PM
- Mark as New
- Bookmark
- Subscribe
- Subscribe to RSS Feed
- Highlight
- Report to Moderator
Whilst i am on can i only use my new hard disk for data storage or can i install programmes on it or will i have to install an OS first before i can install anything
Many Thanks
Re: Help installing Hard drive please
13-08-2007 9:46 PM
- Mark as New
- Bookmark
- Subscribe
- Subscribe to RSS Feed
- Highlight
- Report to Moderator
I recommend creating a directory "Program Files" and installing them there so that it keeps things a bit tidier.
Re: Help installing Hard drive please
13-08-2007 9:51 PM
- Mark as New
- Bookmark
- Subscribe
- Subscribe to RSS Feed
- Highlight
- Report to Moderator
If you want to install new programs to the new drive you will have to point the installation path from the default to your new drive.
So when application ABC says it wants to install to c:\programs\ABC you need to browse to the location of your new drive... Or if your new drive is 'D' for example just change the ’C’ in the path to a ‘D’ and then all the files will be installed to d:\programs\ABC.
Re: Help installing Hard drive please
13-08-2007 11:18 PM
- Mark as New
- Bookmark
- Subscribe
- Subscribe to RSS Feed
- Highlight
- Report to Moderator
Secondly its likely its faster than the drive you have so putting XP on it would speed up your system a lot .
So the best way forward is to put the new drive in as the master and your old drive as the slave then use the free disk copier from
http://www.miray.de/products/sat.hdclone.html#info
This will copy the hard drive and you system will then boot from the newer faster drive with a backup copy on the old drive.
You have the option whether to use all the new drive for windows or split it up into 2 partions.
Re: Help installing Hard drive please
14-08-2007 12:06 AM
- Mark as New
- Bookmark
- Subscribe
- Subscribe to RSS Feed
- Highlight
- Report to Moderator
Many thanks everyone for all your help
- Subscribe to RSS Feed
- Mark Topic as New
- Mark Topic as Read
- Float this Topic for Current User
- Bookmark
- Subscribe
- Printer Friendly Page
- Plusnet Community
- :
- Forum
- :
- Other forums
- :
- Tech Help - Software/Hardware etc
- :
- Help installing Hard drive please