need some advice please

[wiiii]

hi,
right, first off, i want to change my hard disc drive in my computer.
i've never changed one myself or even seen one being changed for that matter. i am quite competent with computers though, so i'm not scared of giving it ago.
i've swapped and changed other things inside my computer before now, ram, cd-writer & graphics cards
so i kind of know roughly what to to do and what not to do.

i am just wondering though if any of you guys knew of any sites which have really great walkthroughs that i could follow.

ideally what i want to do is just change my current c drive to a bigger drive with a faster spin rate.
also, and i don't know if this is possible, but i would really love it if i could transfer everything off my current drive to the new hdd. complete with windows and all of the system files and everything else that goes with it. not just my documents.
now, is that possible ?

what sort of cables and stuff will i need?
any sites you can recommend to show me how to do this?
any recommended on-line shops that i can get a good deal on a new drive?


cheers.

[ror100]

Shop wise Ebuyer - Cheap Computers, Laptops, Digital Cameras, TVs & more! are fantastic, I personally only buy Western Digital hard disc's.

For a guide, have a look at Computeractive - simple clear computer advice there should be a good one on there.

For copying your whole disc to the new one, I'd recommend Norton Ghost.

[Goose]

I'd recommend the ghost method too. If you decide to reinstall instead then make sure you have all the drivers handy that you need for getting on the web (to download the rest). Installing to SATA can be a pain sometimes so deffo try the ghost method first.

[wiiii]

thanks for the help guys.

that ebuyer is good. ain't never used that before.

this is the current drive in my machine
Maxtor 6Y080L0 Specifications


on that ebuyer site i noticed that the drives were seperated into "ide" and "sata" drives. i'm presuming these are the types of connections used.

could anyone confirm which type of drive i will need please

thanks

[ror100]

Originally Posted by wiiii

thanks for the help guys.

that ebuyer is good. ain't never used that before.

this is the current drive in my machine
Maxtor 6Y080L0 Specifications


on that ebuyer site i noticed that the drives were seperated into "ide" and "sata" drives. i'm presuming these are the types of connections used.

could anyone confirm which type of drive i will need please

thanks

If you want a direct replacement for your current disk then you need to be buying IDE, it's the one with the big flat cable going to the motherboard, possibly via the CD/DVD drive.

[Adrenalin]

you should be able to slave the old hard drive. Then you can easily transfer stuff over and also have 2 hard drives running in your pc. You just simply connect the remaining IDE connector (if there is 2 on your cable, most have). Then put in the power cable and your off and running.

[W24TSN]

Right.....Swapping an HDD is really no different to swapping a CDROM/CDRW...same kind of bay and screws etc, same cables too.
Installing the actual drive is really easy.
One thing you will need to make sure are correct, is the jumpers on the rear of the drive. Have a look on the current drive and there should be six or eight little pins and two of them should have a little plastic peg on them. Refer to the label for those two pins (Master, Slave or Cable Select) and make sure the new drive is set the same.

As for copying all of the info, exactly how it is, from one drive to another, Norton Ghost will be your best bet (as someone else has already mentioned) but this means that you will have to put both hard drives in the machine at once OR borrow or buy an external USB hard drive bay and do it that way.

Other than the jumpers though, all should be pretty smooth.