Have a Hewlett Packard Pavillion w/ 3 GB Hard Drive. Just bought an 80 GB Hard drive. I am fairly computer knowledgable, but wanted to know if this is something I can do myself? Will I erase anything on the existing hard drive? The guy at Best Buy basically said pop your tower open and install. Just wondering if it is that simple. Any help will be greatly appreciated.

 

yeh pop it open and plug it in.

i assume y0u are running 0ut of space on teh 3gb dr1ve, so y0u will probably want t0 c0py everything from the 0ld dr1ve t0 teh new dr1ve.

there sh0uld be a fl0ppy d1sk with teh new dr1ve that has utilities t0 transfer teh old dr1ve info to teh new dr1ve.

after it c0pies stuff 0ver, just take teh 0ld dr1ve 0ut and y0u sh0uld be in business.

make sur3 y0u re4d teh instructi0ns first th0.

g00d luck.

 

ok, if your comp comes w/ a 3GB HD, it's probably pretty old... i'm wondering if it's capable of installing 2 HD's together...

open up your computer (i assume it's a tower), look at the wide cable that's going into the exsisting HD, if you see another plug in the middle of that cable, you can probably install an extra HD

so, 1st thing 1st, take out the HD from it's bracket, and there should be a lil diagram on how to set the "jumper". set it to cable select.

now set your new HD the same way, "cable select"

plug in the new HD into the middle slot of that wide cable (that will be your slave drive).

turn the computer back on, windows should "found new hardware". let it do it's thing. if you're running winxp, right click on "my computer" and select manage.

go to storage --> disk management

you should see your new drive disk 1 (disk 0) is your master (old disk)

select the new drive and format it w/ NTFS format. when it's done, right click on it again, if you see a choice for activate, click on it

reboot

once rebooted, install windows on the new disk, once it's done, you can start copying things over.

once you're done, take out the old hd and plug the new one into where the old one used to be, reinstall everything, you should be done then

rep points please

 

wipeout, can you not type like a 13 y/o girl? thanks

 

Omgwtfbbq?!?!11!!?!!

 

Not only would I wonder if you can install both hard drives, but usually an older machine running a 3GB drive may not even recognize the full 80GB of space on the new drive.

You may need to purchase a new controller card to run this 80GB drive. No need to get anything fancy, you can get a $20-$30 Promise card to run the hard drive.

You may also run into an issue where the new drive is configure to run in Ultra DMA 66 (or higher) mode which I suspect you machine is not capable of. If so, you may need to read the manual that came with the drive and determine how to disable this feature. I'd suggest trying it as-is before making this change. Your current IDE controller may only be capable of UltraDMA 33, if not lower.

Also, if you find that you cannot "see" the entire size of the drive, DO NOT use the overlay software that comes with the drive, those things are horrendous. Go buy an IDE controller card, it's worth every penny over the overlay software. Now, when I say "see", keep in mind you'll never see the entire 80GB of space, but if the size is less than 30GB's, you'll know what I mean. You should see about 74.5GB of space on an 80GB drive.

I recommed that when you decide to format and setup the new drive, DISCONNECT your working hard drive from your machine so that you have no chance of formatting the wrong drive. Once you format the new drive using fdisk (or some similar application) reconnect your old drive and do the copy process. If you plan on keep the 3GB drive as your install/boot drive, than don't bother with any of that and configure the drive in windows.

 

it also depends on his os.

h0pe its not windows95a. 2GB limit there.

maybe y0u sh0uld just use teh new dr1ve as a D: drive or whatever.

 

and if you are going to perform this feat. I hear you should wear some type of wrist straps to discharge any static electricity.

 

I am running 98second edition. This is a used machine that I bought while I am in temporarily in St. Louis. The system came w/ a CD recorder and DVD drive for $225 bucks. The moniter just went out and now the Hard drive is full. Still think it was worth the price for a basic computer set up.

Thanks for the help fellas

 

just touch some metal to ground himself, he should be fine

 

Your computer probably won't even recognize it. Just get a new computer.