Installing a new Hard Drive

I'm planning on installing a new hard drive into my computer and this is the first time I've ever done anything like this so I have a couple of questions.

First, the vital stats on my computer as it is now:
(I'm not sure what info is needed so I might be going overboard)


Computer:
Operating System Microsoft Windows 98 SE
OS Service Pack -
Internet Explorer 6.0.2800.1106 (IE 6.0 SP1)
DirectX 4.09.00.0904 (DirectX 9.0c)
Computer Name QWERTY (Home)
User Name Administrator

Motherboard:
CPU Type AMD Athlon-PECM, 1100 MHz (11 x 100)
Motherboard Name PCChips M810D (2 PCI, 1 CNR, 2 DDR DIMM, Audio, Video)
Motherboard Chipset SiS 740
System Memory 352 MB (DDR SDRAM)
BIOS Type AMI (11/19/02)

(and this is the reason why I'm installing a new HD:

Partitions:
C: (FAT32) 9756 MB (430 MB free))



First of all - the HD I'm going to be installing is 200GB, how do I find out if my BIOS is going to be able to handle this drive? (I've heard of 'flashing' the BIOS but I've never done it, and not sure if I want to...and don't want to worry about it if I don't need to.)

Second - I'm planning to install Win2K which I believe uses NTFS not FAT32 (I barely know what I'm talking about so don't laugh at me if that sounded stupid)...so will my old HD be compatible with my new one? (if I install it as a secondary drive.) And if not, will I be able to at least extract all the files from the old HD onto the new one?

I think that's all the questions I have for now (or at least the information I need to know to get started on installing the new HD.) This bright, shiny new HD is sitting here on my desk patiently waiting to be put into service and I'm more than ready to install it...I'm just a little confused.

Thanks in advance for any help you can offer, I appreciate it.

 

Before buying a new drive make sure that your motherboard will support 200GB Im not sure it will i had a quick look on google but couldnt find a definative answer sorry.

 

Actually the HD was a gift from my fiance...I didn't know he was getting it and he was just being sweet. He's not knowledgable about these things.

 

If you are adding a HDD it won't be hard to do it right. It's easier to add a HDD than replace one.
Check the jumpers on the back and refer to the manual that came with the HDD. Make sure the jumpers are configured properly.

Now simply plug it in on the HDD cable (it should say slave on the cable) and plug in the power connector. Careful with the power connector they can be quite fragile.

Then you'll have to format it, you can't do this in windows 98 without using fdisk. Go to http://ffdisk.webaps.de/fdisk121.zip (might not work with a 200gb HDD) and download the correct files for a bootable floppy disk. Simply place this floppy disk in your drive when booting up and it's quite simple to navigate around the program.

 

BIOS should not be an issue. You're right, Win2K does use the NT kernel. However, it does support both the NTFS and FAT32 filesystem. Your old drive should be good to go. You can convert it to NTFS at a later time to improve security.

 

Thank you Prophets and Mada for your help I really appreciate it.

Things have changed because I decided to install WinXP instead of Win2K. I decided it would probably be best to upgrade my Win98SE to WinXP before installing the new HD...I didn't want to mess around with conflicts and things.

I'm in the middle of the upgrade as I type this...and probably won't be installing the HD until tomorrow...but everything is ready to go (I've got the jumper set and the cables are ready.)

I've got my fingers crossed that this works (I had a STOP error about 20 minutes into the install but when I rebooted the computer and restarted things...everything seems to be going alright since the reboot.)

I'm doing the 2:30 a.m. ramble so i'll shut up now.

Thanks again for your help...and if all goes well I won't have to come back begging for more.

 

Now that you're installing XP you woon't need to use fdisk to format it. You can use the disk manager.
Go to control panel>administrative options>computer management and look on the left menu for computer management.

 

Oh this is just not working the way I wanted it to!

Basically I got my old HD upgraded to WinXP...then I got the new HD installed. I used Computer Management to format the new HD...and seems as if all is well. But here's the problem: my old hard drive is too full...even with almost 2GB of data transferred to the new HD the old HD is too full to install WinXP SP2 (and I have to do that before I can run a Windows Update for some of my old hardware to work properly with WinXP.) (lost yet?)

I think the best thing to do now really would be to take the two hard drives back out...swap them...and set the Primary to slave and the Slave to Primary. (Or it seems like one of my friends once had a computer with two HDs...one was the primary and the other one was set up with a CD-Rom as slave...but I might have a faulty memory.)

Also I noticed that when I installed the 200GB HD the computer didn't recognize the full 200GB...just 128GB. I'm satisfied with that...but is there any way to get full use of all my 200GBs?

 

Your plan sounds most feasible to me....
As for your hard drive space...are you still using FAT32 or have you switched to NTFS?

 

My old HD is still using FAT32...but the new one automatically used NTFS. Would it help my situation any to convert the old one to NTFS? (I'm just worried about the "This is permanent and forever and you can't ever undo it!" factor with converting to NTFS from FATt32.)

 

Hmmm...I wouldn't imagine that it would suddenly give you an extra 72 GB on your other drive, but it can't hurt.

NTFS can be converted BACK to fat32, but its just not easy. If I were you, I would take the time to backup the old (smaller) HDD to the larger, install windows on it, and have your files on the larger drive and the applications on the smaller. This makes it faster and quicker to defragment, format, backup, etc, and you might have the room to install SP2 on the original HDD along the way.

On my own PC, I have 30GB for the system partition and 110 for the storage. I don't lose any of my precious documents or media should I have to format the system partition. Just a thought.

 

I'm starting to wonder if I've stepped in over my head.

I need to defrag my C drive REALLLLY bad...but the defrag won't work because it says I don't have enough free disk space. (I've got 5% and it wants 15% free.)

I've sent over all my picture files and mp3s to the new HD...which should have freed up enough space on the old one...but still I don't have enough room. I've deleted programs that I'm sure I can quickly re-install (such as HJT, Ad-Aware and a few others)...and even dumped some programs that I'd rather not have dumped...and STILL not enough room.

Is it possible to just copy C: and transfer everything to D:? I know the answer is probably really simple...but I'm stumped. This is more complicated that I hoped it would be.