How To Install New Hard Drive in Windows XP

[Jason Saffer]

Hi all,

I have purchased a 400 gig internal hard drive (Western Digital SATA drive)
and want to use it to replace my existing C drive on my Dell system. My
current system has two internal drives (C and D). I have an image backup of
the C drive on the D drive, which I want to use to restore onto my new C
drive once it's up and running.

I know how to remove and put in the new drive into the bay and motherboard.
But I think the new drive will still need to be recognized by the BIOS and
also formatted, right? I need advice on how I accomplish that part. How do I
get the BIOS to see the drive and how do I format and partition it?

After I've done that, I figured I would use the image backup software's
bootup CD to go into the image software's opening screen and then just
restore my image from D (of my previous C drive) and then I should be up and
running. Does that sound right?

I'd appreciate input on these questions! Thanks much!

Jason
(e-mail address removed)

 

[Shenan Stanley]

I have purchased a 400 gig internal hard drive (Western Digital
SATA drive) and want to use it to replace my existing C drive on my
Dell system. My current system has two internal drives (C and D). I
have an image backup of the C drive on the D drive, which I want to
use to restore onto my new C drive once it's up and running.

I know how to remove and put in the new drive into the bay and
motherboard. But I think the new drive will still need to be
recognized by the BIOS and also formatted, right? I need advice on
how I accomplish that part. How do I get the BIOS to see the drive
and how do I format and partition it?

Install the drive - setting the jumpers appropriately.
Boot into your system BIOS.
Detect the drive. Make sure it sees the whole thing.

If you are applying an "image" - like Ghost - then you don't need to do much
to the drive. Use the imaging application to apply the image to the drive -
and the application may even have a utility or two to partition it if you
wish to beforehand. Otherwise http://www.bootdisk.com/ could provide you
with a diskette to use to FDISK and FORMAT the drive.

After I've done that, I figured I would use the image backup
software's bootup CD to go into the image software's opening screen
and then just restore my image from D (of my previous C drive) and
then I should be up and running. Does that sound right?

Maybe. You haven't really explained what type of "image" you have going.
heh

 

[Kerry Brown]

Hi all,

I have purchased a 400 gig internal hard drive (Western Digital SATA
drive) and want to use it to replace my existing C drive on my Dell
system. My current system has two internal drives (C and D). I have
an image backup of the C drive on the D drive, which I want to use to
restore onto my new C drive once it's up and running.

I know how to remove and put in the new drive into the bay and
motherboard. But I think the new drive will still need to be
recognized by the BIOS and also formatted, right? I need advice on
how I accomplish that part. How do I get the BIOS to see the drive
and how do I format and partition it?
After I've done that, I figured I would use the image backup
software's bootup CD to go into the image software's opening screen
and then just restore my image from D (of my previous C drive) and
then I should be up and running. Does that sound right?

I'd appreciate input on these questions! Thanks much!

Jason
(e-mail address removed)

Are the current drives SATA or PATA? The process is different depending on
the answer.

Kerry

 

[Jason Saffer]

The current drive that I'm replacing, and the new drive I'll be installing,
both are SATA drives.

Thanks!

....Jason

 

[Jason Saffer]

Thanks for this info!

How do I make sure the BIOS detects the drive, exactly. What's the
procedure? I know how to get into the BIOS but am not sure how to tell it to
detect a drive. I've used Acronis True Image to backup the whole C drive
onto the second internal D drive, and I've got a bootup CD created by the
Acronis program that will allow me to restore the image, once I've got a
formatted and partitioned new C drive in place.

Thanks for your response!

.....Jason

 

[Kerry Brown]

The current drive that I'm replacing, and the new drive I'll be
installing, both are SATA drives.

Thanks!

...Jason

It's an easy process then. The procedure you outlined should work fine. You
don't say what software you used to image the old drive. With most imaging
programs you shouldn't need to parttion or format the drive first. As to the
BIOS recognising it that depends on the BIOS. If you remove the old drive
and install the new one in it's place then the new one should show up in the
BIOS where the old one was. Make sure the BIOS is set to boot from the new
one. Here is a step by step that will work with most imaging programs.

1) Shut down computer and unplug the power cable.
2) Remove old drive.
3) Install new drive on the same SATA connector you removed the old one
from.
4) Boot into BIOS and confirm drive is recognised (different procedure for
different BIOS)
5) Boot from the imaging program's boot CD
6) Restore image to new drive. You should be able to specify the partition
size during the restore process. How depends on the imaging program you
used.
7) Power down computer.
8) Boot from new drive.
9) You can now reinstall the old drive on a different SATA connector if you
wish and repartition and format it in Windows.

Kerry

 

[Bill Blanton]

Check that the BIOS see the full capacity. 40000MB or
400GB or whatever. If it lists the drive in logical blocks
multiply that by 512. You might find it under "Advanced"
"IDE/ATA/Drive config.." or something like that. All BIOS
setup programs are different. Poke around.

 

[Ron Sommer]

Install the drive - setting the jumpers appropriately.
Boot into your system BIOS.
Detect the drive. Make sure it sees the whole thing.

SATA doesn't have jumpers.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1046951,00.asp

If you are applying an "image" - like Ghost - then you don't need to do
much to the drive. Use the imaging application to apply the image to the
drive - and the application may even have a utility or two to partition it
if you wish to beforehand. Otherwise http://www.bootdisk.com/ could
provide you with a diskette to use to FDISK and FORMAT the drive.

Does fdisk work on a 400 GB drive?
You want to use Fat32?

 

[Plato]

I know how to remove and put in the new drive into the bay and motherboard.
But I think the new drive will still need to be recognized by the BIOS and
also formatted, right? I need advice on how I accomplish that part. How do I
get the BIOS to see the drive and how do I format and partition it?

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=313348
http://www.theeldergeek.com/formatting_drives_using_xp_cd.htm
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/format_XP.htm