How hard should it be to fit a new hard drive?

Question

I have a pc with a small hdd so I bought a new one but when I try to fit the new one the pc doesn't seem to read it.Both are IDE hard drives so they should work shouldn't they?

Answer 1

okay, take them both out and on the first one it should say on the lable how to set it to master or master with slave, you have to pull the clip out of the back of the hard drive (use your nails and pinch it out) and put it in the correct slot. set the new hard drive as 'slave'. now it should work. and make sure that you have them in the correct sequance on the IDE cable. (i dont remember 100%) but i think the old had drive goes on the end of the cable and the new Hard drive on the biddle IDE strip.



any problems, message me.







if your replacing the old one and trying to install the software that came with your PC, it isnt going to work, because it's a sort of feature that the company uses to stop people illigaly copying the software. the program has run the checks and finds it to be a diffrent computer so it wont install, you will have to either put it as a slave, or buy a new copy of windows.

Answer 2

Could we go back to your initial question first. You ask should they work because they are both IDE. The answer to that is an unequivocal not necessarily. It depends how old your PC is or rather your BIOS. I dealt with a case last week where someone had gone from 40Gb to 120 GB (both IDE, both the same manufacturer). Didn't work properly. When I checked the BIOS I found that it had never been updated and effectively could not recognize any disc bigger than 40GB. So in that case the advice you had (which is generally correct) to let your BIOS handle the disc automatically would have made no difference. You have now explained that you cannot even get into the BIOS. That is quite worrying because strictly speaking there is no connection between putting in a HD and not being able to use BIOS. There are dozens of possible reasons for your problem. The most likely are that your power supply needs to be replaced, there is a cable not quite seated properly or that when replacing your HD you did not ground on a non painted metal surface and you have managed to blow something with a static discharge.

Answer 3

Hard drives can either be set as master or slave. The old drive will have almost certainly have been set as a master. You want to make sure that the new one is and do a direct swap. So check the jumpers on the new drive. Now make sure that the ribbon lead connects the drive to the motherboard and the drive is also connected to the power, supply. If the BIOS doesn't recognise it or anything else, replace the old drive and see if it works as before. In fact you should still be able to get into the BIOS without the hard drive connected.



I'd suggest removing your CD drive (or just disconnecting it) and see if you can get the PC to recognise the hard drive alone.



If you still can't get anything on screen it may be that you've dislodged something on opening the computer. Check that the processor, RAM and graphics card are all firmly in their socket. Alternatively you may have damaged something by static electricity: make sure that you always touch the metal case when working on the computer. Static damage will really only be found by replacing component by component (or taking it to a shop). Hopefully it's not that.



The other possibility is, of course, that the new hard drive is faulty.

Answer 4

I assume that you're adding a HDD and not replacing your existing HDD.



If the data (grey) cable you connected it to already has one device connected (HDD or CD/DVD drive), then set the existing device to Master and your new HDD to Slave. Boot and your BIOS should automatically detect it, Windows will pop up a msg that it detected it too.



- Replacing. Best to add it as a second HDD, then Ghost an image of the existing HDD to the New one. Then remove old HDD, leaving just the new HDD.



- You should be able to get a free utility like Nortons Ghost by download. These utility as designed to copy your HDD, sector by sector, to a new HDD, saving you having to reinstall windows, applications, files. The new HDD will appear exactly like the old one, but with more free space..

Try searching for R-Drive Image on www.download.com

Answer 5

while you're nonetheless haveing concern, it somewhat is beneficial to pass to a working laptop or computing device save and get a case to transform the single problematic stress into an exterior stress !!! The situations are approximately 30 greenbacks to transform the stress. which would be one answer. the different answer i can think of of is to alter the jumper pins at the back of the problematic stress till you hit upon a mixture that works. you probably did confuse me slightly once you mentioned the cable defined the slave. The jumper pins at the back of the stress ascertain if is grasp slave. there could be a diagram on the stress to coach the thank you to set it to a slave. The jumper pin is a small plastic cap you will see at the back of the stress that only pulls off and could be moved to the different set of pins.

Answer 6

do it the much easier way get an external hard drive 500 gigs from pc world for £89 just plugs straight in a usb port

Answer 7

check the jumper settings, bios and device mangager. right click my computer and in the menu click on manage. click disk management & see if your drive shows up, If it does try formatting it.

Answer 8

You may want to clone your old drive on to your new one. This software works and it is free:-

Answer 9

You will have to go into the BIOS to set the new hard drive in the system [use autoconfigeration]

Answer 10

How about trying this out:

http://compreviews.about.com/od/tutorials/ss/DIYSecHD.htm

Answer 11

you should first partition and format it - how to do that, depends on your operating system.