have XP and need new hard drive

[williamchad]

I need to know how to change old internal hard drive as my 145 GB is full and
what programs that I have taken off still leave only 14% to use.

I bought a WD 500GB internal hard drive from Dell and need to know how or
what I need to install the new one. Can anyone help me? or can I keep my old
hard drive as a slave?

 

[Shenan Stanley]

I need to know how to change old internal hard drive as my 145 GB
is full and what programs that I have taken off still leave only
14% to use.

I bought a WD 500GB internal hard drive from Dell and need to know
how or what I need to install the new one. Can anyone help me? or
can I keep my old hard drive as a slave?

Use the utility Western Digital provides to clone the drive to the new
larger drive.

 

[Mark Adams]

I need to know how to change old internal hard drive as my 145 GB is full and
what programs that I have taken off still leave only 14% to use.

I bought a WD 500GB internal hard drive from Dell and need to know how or
what I need to install the new one. Can anyone help me? or can I keep my old
hard drive as a slave?

Go to the website of the maker of the new hard drive. Download their hard
disk utilities software. Create a bootable disk from the download.

Shut the machine down and open the computer case. If the new drive is a SATA
drive, attach it to an available SATA port. If it's a PATA drive, set the
jumper to "slave" and attach the drive to the slave position of the IDE cable.

Boot the machine and enter the BIOS and change the boot order to boot from
CD. Place the utilities CD you created earlier into the drive; save and exit
the BIOS. The machine will now boot to the utilities CD. select the cloning
utility from the menu and start the utility. Select your boot drive as the
source and the new drive as the destination and proceed with the cloning.

When it's finished, shut the machine down and remove the original drive from
the machine. If the new drive is SATA attach the cable to the original SATA
port. If the new drive is PATA, move the jumper to the "master" position and
attach the drive to the master position on the IDE cable.

Boot the machine and test how it runs. Run it for several weeks and test all
of your applications to see that everything works properly. Once you are
satisfied that all is well, place the old drive into the computer using the
"slave" settings explained above and reformat the drive using Disk
Management. The old drive will now be clean and available as free space.

If you have never done this before, it would be a good idea to test this out
on a spare computer and hard drives until you are comfortable with the
procedure. If you don't feel that you can do this, take the machine to a
reputable computer repair shop.

 

[kim]

Western Digita are giving away Acronis True Image Free so you can clone your
new drive
http://support.wdc.com/product/downloaddetail.asp

 

[peter]

How about hooking the new one up as a slave if your system has the
connections and the case has the room.
Then format it thru Control Panel/Admin Tools/computer management.
In order to make some room on the old drive you can point IE cache and Mail
storage to the new drive.
You can uninstall some programs and reinstall on the new drive, and you can
install most if not all
new programs to the new drive.

peter

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

I need to know how to change old internal hard drive as my 145 GB is full and
what programs that I have taken off still leave only 14% to use.

I bought a WD 500GB internal hard drive from Dell and need to know how or
what I need to install the new one. Can anyone help me? or can I keep my old
hard drive as a slave?

You have three choices:

1. Clone the old drive to the new one and replace the old with the
new.

2. Clone the old drive to the new one and replace the old with the
new, then delete everything on the old one and use it as a second
drive (probably, but not necessarily as a slave to the old one).

3. Leave the old one as it is and install the new one as a second
drive (probably, but not necessarily as a slave to the old one). Then
move some of what you have on the old drive to the new one.

The third choice would be the easiest one, and unless the new drive is
considerably faster than the old one, that's what I would recommend.