New hard drive on my computer?

Question

Ok first i need a new hard drive because my little cousin broke it when i was cleaning it from dust (my computer has alot of dust problems) he smashed it so it's gone now and i need to buy a new hard drive a bigger one this time because my old one was 350GB and was full but i will get all my music and movies off my brothers computer anyway which is close to 200GB.
Now when i get a new hdd will i need to do anything with bios or cmos for my computer parts to be connected or what ever it is to my hard drive (I'm a noob with computers, not like you can't tell) or do i just put all the installation cds for the parts which i have because i got my computer made up so what do i just do because i am going to buy windows 7 and then my hdd do i just put windows 7 installation disk in and then the other parts cds.

Also is this hard drive any good i am looking for a decent size hdd
what do you think of this hdd
http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=210_344&products_id=7890

Also windows 7 is apparently cheaper in America then Australia and i know the exchange rates can you buy windows 7 directly from microsoft in America or ???
THANKYOU!! Evryones help appreciated

Answer 1

there are sata and pata hdd so you need to get the correct one. You can get win7 for free from the microsoft website. search the following link. You will have to pay for it in january but you should get it cheap.



http://support.microsoft.com/ click change in the top RH corner and go to USA



SATA connection View



http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/244014-32-passport-external-drive-drive-type



PATA connection power is a white molex plug and the data is a wide ribbon.



Partition the Hard drive – reasons

========================

Firstly C drive is compulsory for the Operating System (XP) (Vista), and you install all your programs on C drive.



D drive is made for YOUR files.

What you do is MOVE my documents to D drive.



When you download music, videos, pictures from your camera or make any MS Office documents or save emails, you save it on D drive.



The reason for this is to do with

1. Hard drive failure - usually a failed hard drive will not boot, but can often be seen when hooked up as a slave.

So when you get your new hard drive up and running, you can copy D drive from your old to your new. You haven’t lost anything.



2. Virus. Normally virus are programmed to infect C drive. If you get a bad virus all that has to be done is format the C drive partition then re install you OS and programs from disks.

You haven’t lost your personal stuff because its on D drive.



3. Scanning your C drive for virus or spyware. These malware programs live on C drive. It is not necessary to scan D drive. It is a lot quicker to scan a small partition than a large hard drive.



Now you can see the above is compromised by the fact that programs get updates and lots of programs are installed from the net. Therefore if you had to wipe out C drive it be hard to get it back to how it was.

To remedy this we use Norton Ghost to image C drive and store the Image on D drive.

(Vista requires a version 10 or newer of Ghost).



If you get a bad virus you just use the Ghost disk to boot up on, then copy the image stored on D drive back over C drive.

It takes less than 30 mins to rebuild C drive.

Also you may have this running on say a 250 gig HDD, and it fails. You buy a new 400 gig HDD and install both into you computer, the failed one as a slave.

Using the ghost disk to boot up on, you partition the 400 C drive to 30 gig (XP)and the remaining to D drive. Then you repack C drive from the image. Then Copy your old D drive files to your new one. In a time of less than 1 hour and it’s all running. The image loads all the drivers, OS everything.



Then you update new images of C drive every few months so that the one stored on D drive is not to far out of date.



On XP and Vista you create C drive to a maximum of (XP 30 gig, Vista 40 Gig) It doesn’t need to be any bigger, so don’t make C drive to big as you will not use it.

All drives including external hdd should be in NTFS type file system.

Type DISKPART in windows help file

also Disk manager.

click the desktop, hit Fn1 key.



Vista:

http://www.lytebyte.com/2007/02/19/how-to-partition-in-windows-vista-extend-and-shrink/

Answer 2

SLOW PC FIXES: Something is probably running at startup and dragging your PC down, you need to try out step one, see what is launching at start up and disable it. Also, did you recently install something that could be causing this? Try uninstalling the last program you installed. 1)Stomp auto-starting programs. Click Start > Run and type "msconfig" at the prompt. Click the Startup tab and look at all that junk that loads when you launch your PC. Do you really need "Adobe Reader Speed Launch"? Probably not. Turn off anything else that looks useless, but be careful not to disable Windows system components. 2) Clean up the disk. Uninstall unneeded programs (especially those that run at startup and/or put something in the system tray), run Disk Cleanup, and defragment the drive. This is a good first step that will almost always take a few seconds off boot time and application loads for any computer. 3) Run a full anti-virus and anti-spyware scan. I would recommend using AVG Free Anti-virus, AVG Anti-Spyware, Spybot, Ad-Aware. 4) Clean up the registry. This is controversial, as some experts claim registry cleaners don't really help. I've seen evidence to the contrary, so I recommend doing it if you've got a major slowdown. CCleaner is free and worth running. 5)Delete old network connections. Your computer may be trying to connect to shared hard drives that no longer exist. In Windows Explorer right-click on any network shares you don't actively use and click Delete. Under Tools, also click "Disconnect Network Drive" to see if there are any others lurking about. Those are the easy and free things you can do. If your computer is still slow you need to move on to the bigger guns. 1) Upgrade RAM. This is the one killer trick that will make almost any computer run faster. With an older PC, you will rarely have enough RAM to run today's memory-hogging operating systems and applications, and adding a high-capacity stick or two of quality RAM will give you a quick speed boost. Adding RAM is fairly simple, even for a novice, and you should be able to do the job in 5 or 10 minutes. 2)Reinstall Windows. If the above tricks haven't helped, it may be time to wipe the slate clean and start again, reformatting your hard drive, reinstalling your applications, and restoring your data files from a backup. You'd be surprised how much more responsive a freshly reinstalled Windows system can be, as you've wiped out years of temp files, garbled registry entries, old versions of software programs that have been upgraded repeatedly, and all sorts of other electronic junk. Reinstalling is easy if you have the "recovery disk" that came with your PC, and only a bit more involved if you're using a retail copy of Windows XP. Just be sure you back up everything you want to take with you before you pull the trigger! 3)Upgrade your hard drive. This is a more complicated solution, but if you're reinstalling Windows (per the prior tip) you might consider upgrading to a bigger and possibly faster hard drive, too. Hard disk storage is a performance bottleneck on every machine, and magnetic disks degrade over time. Some performance issues could be caused by a failing hard drive, even, and upgrading to a new model could really put some zip back in your system. As a bonus, you can use the original hard drive for backups or occasional storage, if you put it in an enclosure.

Answer 3

Benifits of a computer hard drive.





Computer forensic examinations became a widely known method of investigation that is completed by expert private investigators because of the large amount of evidence that they can provide for many types of troublesome situations.



A situation where an accomplice is cheating in your relationship or marriage has become the most common reasons for such type of investigation that generally reaches the minds of most people that first hear in terms of a computer forensic examination. Although the evidence that experts will obtain with this service when infidelity is happening in a relationship has provided most people with the answers these folks looking for, there are usually other situations and benefits associated with having a computer forensic test performed.



To list these would include situations when employee misuse of enterprise computers is suspected by employer of a business enterprise, when problems of being addicted to porn is suspected that they are occurring in a romance, and many different instances of misbehavior that could end up as very serious problems that happen to be suspected by a teen's dad and mom. In some cases young adults runaways have even been located because the helpful information that was obtained while in the performance of the examination. The benefits that people today and families receive originating from a computer forensic investigation might literally be priceless should the result is saving youngsters or teenager from tragedies that are known to occur because of activity over the internet.



One of the explanations that computer forensic examinations became such a well-known and popular tool if you're is because of the types of data that can be recovered with the hard drive of computers than a person suspects to hold evidence potentially they are looking for. Not only can all these investigations recover emails that are previously deleted, but they're able to also uncover deleted information that is definitely contained in deleted information and documents, instant information from AOL, MSN, Yahoo and various messenger chat logs, and even photographs and graphics that are deleted.



When these different styles of evidence have been recovered originating from a computer's hard drive which includes a computer forensic examination, them gives employers, parents, soulmates, husbands and wives the proof you have to confront many different different types of situations. It also gives them a chance to do whatever they deem expected to either get specific challenges completely eliminated or not less than under control.

To know more tips click this link.

Answer 4

i think 350GB is already enough,do you have great amount files to store?