installing hadrdrive.......

ok im abought to try and install a new hard drive on a computer for some one...and i have never dune it before,can some one tell me how to do this i want to add it to the one thats allreddy on it. the computer has a 27.8g hard drive on it and im going to try to add an 80g to it.but i dont want to wipe out every thing thats on this computer.so can some one tell me how???

 

Is this an IDE hard drive, Earl? By that, I mean does it have a wide, (usually ) grey cable, with a red stripe on one side?

 

ummm well i havent got it yet ill have it tonight.now ill be doing it on an old hp.if your on tonight ill be able to tell you more.but while i have you on here let me ask you about some memory i had an old old computer like a phinox or something like that,but i pulled out the memoryand my mom had some one put it in her computer and its not showing that its on their it still says that itd only 64 do you know any thing abought this???

 

I won't be on tonight, amigo. I have to go to a customer's place in a few minutes. Be sure you get a hard drive that the machine will support (there's ALOT of SATA drives on the market nowadays, and I'm willing to bet that you want an IDE) To connect it, set the jumper on the back to slave (a diagram on the unit will show you how), and plug in the IDE connector that's closer to the motherboard. Hook up power and boot the machine.

As for the RAM....well....that's going to be a tough one. Older RAM should be the same size and speed to work correctly. Newer machines sometimes demand the RAM be in particular slots... try using SANDRA to get all the information you can about the RAM, and post back with it.

 

A couple of suggestions that will improve the odds of getting good information from this forum instead of guesses that may or may not be relevant to the computers you're dealing with:

• go to the manufacturers' websites and download the manual for both computers
• check the announcement at the head of this forum and follow the link -- and do as suggested there.

Memory requirements vary hugely between machines. The motherboard manual is your best bet for making sure that you get what you need, and not something that doesn't fit/doesn't work even if it does fit/seems to work but corrupts data or causes odd behaviour in your computer.

For another time: it would be better if separate problems were dealt with in separate posts. It makes it easier for others to find the problem and the solution instead of re-inventing the wheel every time.