new hard drive VISTA

[farmer]

My sons computer needs a bigger hard drive in readiness for VISTA obviously there are plenty available my plan is (probably mistaken!!!) to fit new drive as a secondary drive then copy entire drive details across from the existing HD then swap the jumpers to make the new drive the master bootup drive .

Is it that simple?

Are there different types of HD that I need to understand format and plugs wise ?

If so how do I determine the correct one .

All other aspects of the computer are VISTA compatable .

Pick the bones out of that

Thanks

[shocker-z]

there are 2 main types of HDD either SATA or IDE you can tell by the connector on the HDD as a SATA HDD is connected by 2 cables 1 to power and one is a small connector to the motherboard. The IDE HDD is a wide cable with a red stripe down one side of the cable same as your CDROM drive.

Your not able to just copy and paste the HDD over to the new one. The best way to copy the HDD is to use GHOST look at downloading Hirens boot CD off a site and that can boot to ghost for you and you can *CLONE the HDD to the newer one.



Regards
Liam

[FourWheelDrift]

You can't just copy across from one HDD to a new one as system bootable files will not be copied across, what you have to do is use imaging software like Norton Ghost to copy the old disk onto the new one.

Before you buy a new HDD check what type your PC has, is it IDE (PATA) or SATA (common types) do you know how big a new disk you are going to buy and if your PC's bios can support a disk of that size?


Edited to say....toooooooooooooooooooo slow.

Edited by FourWheelDrift on Sunday 11th February 18:48

Edited by FourWheelDrift on Sunday 11th February 18:48

[arcturus]

I am afraid it's not quite as simple as that because merely copying the contents of the hard drive will not copy areas such as the boot sector which is required to boot the drive into Windows.

What you need to do is clone the drive using a free tool such as HDClone which effectively takes an exact photocopy of your existing drive and puts it on the new one, boot sector and everything else as well.

The partition on the new drive drive will be the same size as the one on the old drive so you will then need to use a tool such as gparted Live CD to resize the partitions afterwards to suit.

[farmer]

Thanks for that . just as I expected

just to clarify the sata drive has 2 ribon type connectors ?
and an ide has the conventional ribon and the 4 pin plug for power ?

intended size is roughly 80 gb the system is virtualy brand new with a 3000 procesor.

it's just that his old 60gb hd showed a fault when built into the new system so a "free" 20gb was "comandeered" instead.

Thanks

[farmer]

any other offers

[Popolou]

Why not just purchase the new drive, install it as the master then allow the installation routine to create the neccessary partition size and install the OS all in one go?

Then, connect the older drive as secondary and copy over what you want, say photos, music, work etc. This way, you will have a perfectly clean and running system to start from. It sounds like you could be making things rather difficult for yourself otherwise.

Regards

Popolou

[farmer]

Thanks but the instalation is less than a month old as it is it took hours to set up the home network let alone all the programmes loaded on now ....define simple ....

[farmer]

what manufacturer is best at the moment Maxstor ? Seagate ?

[farmer]

any ideas ?

[wolves_wanderer]

I've never had any problems with Western Digital

[farmer]

Thanks