I need more space!

[RedVexHK]

LOL.. Agreed,I know when I flashed my BIOS to do a processor update to use core2 processors.. until it said BIOS upgrade completed successfully.. and it rebooted without issues.. I sweated a whole pail of ice cold sweat. luckily mine was ok.. but I have seen the results of a bad flash... don't do it unless you have NO choice.. or are a crazy blonde... (yours Truly)

 

Any external USB is always worth having even your mod files can be stored there.. I assume you don't download,install,delete.. kinda wasteful I find.. but saving them takes up space... an external USB HDD is perfect for that and frees up plenty of space.

[Illiad86]

lol yeah I did it for the first time on this PC, had my fingers crossed praying I didn't screw up lol. It was necessary for me at the time, I was having such awful problems with this thing...just turned out to be a faulty HDD. Just ticked that they haven't released another one so my motherboard doesn't take so long figuring out that I have a graphics card. I thought it wouldn't be a problem, as I've heard that PCI-E x16 2.0 is backwards compatible with PCI-E x16 1.0. It is...just a minute long of the graphics card fan spinning until the beep comes along lol.

 

Yeah, those are good as backups, but nothing else really. USB 2.0 is pretty darn slow compared to SATA.

[Paxan_1]

Hi ub3rman,

 

yeah, maybe you machine can't work with a 2TB one, sorry wasn't aware of that. Thanks Bben for the advice :thumbsup:

If your computer is "that" old, i think you need to make sure it can handle a bigger external drive. Maybe you can have a question to your friends if they have a spare "old" harddrive? Like myself i have 3 small ones just laying around....

 

The Bios thing, it is a little tricky i think. You can easily destroy your pc if you do something wrong. That's the reason why i bought a mainboard with two bios chips on it (yes i'm blond :rolleyes: ).

If there is some bios flash software for your computer (on one of your cd's i think) which are working with WIndows it should be easy. The other way would be to flash a bios with the command line, but i wouldn't do this that way... :confused:

 

Oh, and a thought because of the Sata, maybe for answering by the more skilled users here. If the computer is "old" maybe he will need some new drivers to run a new harddrive, even as an external usb device?

[ub3rman123]

Okay, I think I'll be happy with a 1tb drive. So, since there's those 4 SATA sockets, the hard drives that have SATA in the title should be compatible with it? I'll open the computer again later to see about the power sockets.

 

So, from what I understand.. YOu have to install the new hard disk with a new driver, similar to video cards?

 

What happens to the information on the other drive? I assume I'll be able to transfer it over to the new one?

[RedVexHK]

if you want to keep your data off the old hdd and transfer it to your new drive.. and the old one was your master... what you need to do is ghost the drive .. unless you are familiar with this.. I'd suggest you bring both drives to your local shop and have them ghost it for you. I recently upgraded mine from 80 gigs to 500 gigs and had the old drive ghosted to my new drive .. cost me a grand total of $22.50 taxes in Canadian.now my 500 gig has everything installed and working as if it were the original 80 gig

[ub3rman123]

What does ghosting it mean? Can't just drag and drop the files or temporarily store them on an external drive?

[RedVexHK]

ghosting is when you replace a smaller master hdd with a new much larger one but don't want to have to reinstall everything from scratch. You can use a program such as Norton Ghost to completely transfer an entire hdd.. registry files.. installed software, your O/S all hidden and system files.. everything... just copying your drive will never work. Any good computer store will know what you want even if you don;t understand what it is.. just give them your old master and the new drive ask them to ghost the old drive to the new one.. then make sure they verify the drive integrity to assure a stable transfer ,if all files are stable... you are ready to go.. and the new drive is a complete duplicate of your old one...just a LOT bigger... there's a way to do it yourself now much easier.. a USB backup drive... they continously back up your hdd and if it ever fails you can replace it and then press a button on the backup drive and it restores everything to the new drive automatically.

[ub3rman123]

Suppose I didn't mind just reinstalling everything from scratch? I usually wipe my computer every few months (Usually right after releasing a mod) to clear out the clutter, and I don't have much to store that isn't on an MP3 player.

[RedVexHK]

well under that situation.. just install a brand new clean hdd with WinXP or 7 or whatever O/S you like then programs as you want.... back up any files you want to keep on a flash drive if it's that small a list..

[TheTerminator2004]

You don't need any new drivers, and you most definitely do not need to ghost it or reformat or anything like that. Simply slide your new drive into the slot, screw it in, connect the PSU and SATA cables, and you're done. Next time you turn on Windows, your new drive will show up in My Computer automatically. You may need to format it (right click -> format), but once that's done you can use it however you want - install programs etc. Dead simple - much simpler than installing a new video card, for sure.

 

Once you're done, my advice would be to try and keep 10-20gb free on your old drive at all times (since it's the system drive - and Windows generally needs some free space for the swap file, and sundry other temp stuff), which basically means installing any new programs on your new drive, and maybe moving things like your music library etc over to it as well.