Installing a new hard drive.

[a1an]

Hey guys, installing a new hard drive later this week for the first time.. I currently have a F1 spinpoint but I'm now adding a WD 2TB caviar black. I'm basically wanting to be able to boot my windows and my games once I've installed the caviar black. I don't really have an idea what I'm doing software wise but is it do-able? And could anyone show me a good guide to what I'm wanting to do? I know RAID is not possible.

 

[nhasian]

plug the new WD 2TB black in the next available SATA port on your motherboard and plug in power. When you boot up it should be recognized by the bios. After windows loads before you can use it you must go into Disk Management to partition and format the drive as NTFS. after you have done that it will be assigned a drive letter and you can begin using it.

 

[leandrodafontoura]

Friend, simply search on youtube and you will steps by step guides, but its exactly as nhasian said above. Its actually very easy, but may sound scary if its the first time

 

[a1an]

Oh it may be helpful to tell you I'm replacing my mobo too... does that change anything? would i just remove my old hard drive and then put the WD in first in the new mobo or would i still put it in the 2nd port?

 

[nhasian]

a1an, if you are replacing your motherboard you must do a fresh install of windows.

 

[a1an]

Hmm okay, so I need something to back up my stuff then! Can you recommend anything? Got quite a lot of stuff to back up... Thanks though for your help already.

 

[nhasian]

I recommend booting from an Ubuntu or Fedora LiveCD. then you can copy any data you have to an external hard disk or usb thumbdrive.

 

[wavetrex]

Keep the Samsung Spinpoint F1 as boot/system drive (very fast disk, it was the best a few years ago). That caviar black is only marginally faster so you won't see any real gains.

However, a fresh system reinstall will make everything faster no matter on what harddrive you use.

 

[a1an]

Okay, I find it hard to believe I have a F1 because I got it with a prebuilt where it didn't even tell you what hard disk I was getting, just that it was 1tb and I'm pretty sure I got it 3 or 4 years ago... But when I copy and pasted some of the numbers from the model hd103uj on the internet it came up with the F1.

I would quite like however to still see my system boosting from the caviar black. Considering it was the reason why I ended up spending around another £400 on other things as the caviar black had a 6gb/s interface and my mobo didn't. Atleast when I want an SSD I won't need to upgrade my other stuff as much.

Thanks nhasian but how is that more convenient than just copying and pasting things in my windows os from hdd to an external storage device?

 

[nhasian]

Thanks nhasian but how is that more convenient than just copying and pasting things in my windows os from hdd to an external storage device?

sorry i thought you had already installed your new drive. whatever works easiest for you