SATA Hard Drive - How to install?

I've not installed a new internal hard drive before and hoped it would be a bit easier. I've taken the old internal SATA out, reinstalled new Maxtor SATA 160GB. Turn on machine which comes up to black screen w/ option F2 or F12 (Bios I believe). I go into Bios and see the drive is listed. How do I restore what was on previous SATA I just took out which I backed up using Acronis True Image 10? I put this on my external hard drive and also on CD ROM. I changed the boot order 1. CD ROM and 2. SATA drive....nothing seems to work. I do have another CD with Windows XP which I can try, but my first choice to to completely restore the image that was on machine which I did with Acronis. I hope this is making sense to someone out there that can assist. Thanks ....

 

Welcome to Major Geeks!

I think with Acronis you need some sort of bootable media created through the program to boot with before you can access the image files . . . unless you created the CD with the image on it to be a bootable disk; if so I can't advise why it's not booting from the CD-ROM. I've not actually used the version of Acronis you have, nor used the program for this kind of restore yet.
About the easiest way I've found to transfer a partition using Acronis with SATA drives is to install the drive in the PC as a second drive, and use the program to "mirror" the partition to the new drive. Then, in BIOS, change the primary boot drive to the new one. You can then remove the old drive, or reformat it and keep it as a storage medium. I've also used this method with PATA drives, but they are a bit more involved as you need to change jumpers on the drives, and move the drive cables, etc.

(As an aside, If my board lists the SATA ports as 'SATA 1" and "SATA 2", etc. I'll switch the new drive's cable to SATA 1 before I re-boot, though I don't honestly think that makes much difference with SATA . . . I'm a little OCD that way . . . )

If by chance you are not able to have two SATA drives at one time installed, I suggest you re-install the old one, and check Acronis and see if you need to create bootable media and/or a whole new image file.

I hope you find this of some use!

 

Appreciate the note. I don't know how to make the Acronis CD bootable and I'm going to just take the new Hard Drive out and see if I can have both, do the mirror image as you stated. OR, what I really simply would like to do is install Windows XP and then I can maneuver around better. I do not have recovery discs currently, may order from Dell. I will also contact Acronis to see what I'm doing wrong. Figured it was a simple uninstall / reinstall exercise.

 

You don't make the Acronis image bootable. Put back the old hard drive, run the Acronis program and use the wizard to make a bootable CD rescue disk (or a set of 6 floppies). You cold boot the computer with the rescue CD or floppies. This loads the entire program into the computer and then you select restore image and feed the computer the CDs in reverse order.

The other option would be to have both hard drives in the computer and use the clone option instead of the image option. The old hard drive will be cloned in it's entirety to the new hard drive. (I've never used the clone feature so you may have to wait for someone who has used it to go through the particulars and anything to be careful of).

 

If your old HDD is in working order
You can clone your old HDD to the new one you can use maxtor's/Seagates free utilities for this, Maxblast 5 http://seagate.custhelp.com/cgi-bin...nMuc2VhcmNoX25sJnBfcGFnZT0x&p_li=&p_topview=1

As for Acronis, I dont use anymore but you would need a saved bootable image, the older versions of acronis werent friendly to hardware changes.

Cloning with Maxblast 5 would be the Cats AIS

If you new HDD is a retail model it should have come with Maxblast on CD, butt is free download thru my link above
Good Luck!

 

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I have not tried that yet. I was able to create boot disc, restored data (message said it was successful) but still unable to boot correctly. Comes up to BLACK screen after it goes through Dell screen, giving me the options to press F1 or F2.

 

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I am wondering if the new drive is listed as "SATA 0" in the Bios is correct. Shows it there, but why not listed as "SATA1"? There is a SATA 1 listed, but indicates there's nothing there?

 

Sorry so tardy in getting back.

Yes, that's correct - SATA 0 is the same as SATA 1 (and in that case, the SATA 1 listed in your BIOS would equal SATA 2). In BIOS set SATA 0 as the primary boot drive, if you haven't already, and see if that works. I apologise for confusing you. I've seen it listed both ways on motherboards and in BIOS, and I should have have made that plain.

If that doesn't work . . . I see you were able to create a boot-disk and restore the image, but it's still not booting properly? When you press the F keys, what options do you get?

If you restored the drive image to the new drive, and that drive is listed in BIOS as the primary boot-drive, then I can't fathom why it's not working for you. What is the make and model of your motherboard? I'd like to try and take a look at the boards' layout and BIOS settings.

One thing to try - next time you boot up and it gives you the BIOS option, go right to BIOS, make sure the drive is showing and is listed as the default boot drive, and then make sure to select "Exit and Save Changes" again, just to be sure the settings "stick".

 

Natakel - No apologies needed for tardy reply. Well I finally got it up and running. Machine - Dell 4700 Desktop. The only thing that makes any sense is when I restored my data from old hard drive, I did something wrong...a bit confusing on what to put where I remember thinking although it appeared right. I thought I'd try again tonight (eyes shut, clicked away) and it's has NO problem booting up. Something else I thought should have worked though, even if I didn't want to restore data and just install OS and Dell program files, etc. with the discs I received from Dell today, I was not able to. Boot order - I am pretty sure I've done that right - saved and went back to make sure it was in correct order. Wondering if my CD ROM drive may be failing....works on somethings. For the moment, I'm out of the dust. I do want to format another hard drive, which I assume I can put into this computer (uninstalling the good one now) and format and then hook up good one again. Makes sense? I just need to erase the disc and pass onto someone else. Thanks for your time and interest. By the way, I did attempt to clone - having the old one installed along with new one. Seems I did not have cables in right place or using correct ones as the drive was not recognized. Thought that was a good route to go. Would like to try that some other time.

 

Hi, Kathy

I'm glad its working now - computers can be weird critters!

Yes, you should be able to just install the drive you want to erase and wipe the data from it. There are freeware apps that will do it for you, like:
http://dban.sourceforge.net/

Boot and Nuke is a handy utility I've used in the past. There are others around. In fact, if you aren't worried about really secure deletion, the Fdisk commands on a Windows boot disk work just fine.

Again, Welcome to Major Geeks!