Installing a Hard Drive

II.Steps before installation and preparation

Before you start digging around in your computer...you are going to want to get everything you need at hand. If you are starting clean and reinstalling a new version of windows you will want to have a formatted drive and a DOS boot disk. You can create a boot disk by getting a blank floppy and open My Computer then right click on (A:) and select format. Then select option "Copy System files" which then will create a disk for booting up in DOS prompt once you have fomatted your hard drive for Windows installation. If you have a existing drive that you want transfer your data to your new hard drive, you will want to get a DiskCopy utility from (www.powerquest.com). Also note that DISKCOPY and XCOPY will not copy hidden and system files. Once you have all disk backed up and ready to move, clear a space on a desk or table and unplug your computer and carry the case where it is well lighted. Remove the screws holding the out shell of your case, and remove out shell. Now you should be able to see the motherboard and all the insides. So you know, the box in the top left with red, yellow, and black cables coming out is the power supply. At the end of those wires is a connecter with 4 pin holes. Then the ribbons you see are what transfer the data from the drive to the motherboard. Look at your existing setup and look how they connect to the floppy drive etc.

III.The Installation of the HD

Ok. Now your ready to install the hard drive. If your replacing a existing drive look at the jumper settings on the back of your hard drive. Jumpers are what tell your computer what its purpose is. They are pins in sets of 2. They look like this :::[:]:: with ( :=pins and []=the jumper which slids on the pins. ) Once you find out what your existing drive's jumper settings are you then can set your new hard drives jumper settings to the same as the existing. Most drives have listed what the settings are but if they are not listed on the actual hard drive you should refer to the manufacturers website. Your new hard drive should be set on Master and if your just adding an additional hard drive set your old one to slave and new one to master. Now when putting in your new drive you are going to want to slide it in ussually below floppy drive or anywhere you have room. Once you have it slid in connect the power connector to the drive and the wide EIDE ribbon with the pink line on the right near the power connector. Once installation is complete of your hard drive, re-connect the cables and moniter and turn on the power.

IV.CMOS Check

On boot enter your PC's setup program(On boot it ussually shows you what key to press for system setup) and check the BIOS for drives 1 and 2 if you added an additional hard drive. Make sure both drives are set on AUTO so it can detect and set up correctly. Save and reboot.

V.Conclusion

Once windows is booted up check out the new drive and make sure it is working properly. If you added a drive reformat the old one so now you can prepare it for more data. I hope this helped you in the steps of installing or upgrading a new hard drive. If you have any suggestions or questions feel free to email me. More tutorials to come and soon a HTML version with picture references.

VI.Tools and Utilities

Disk Copy Utility
--(http://www.powerquest.com)