Hard Drive upgrade

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CHH1211

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I have a Dell Dimension 4700 that has an 80GB hard drive (2.8ghz pentium 4 and 4GB RAM). The hard drive still works, but I wouls like to upgrade it to a larger/better drive (500GB min.). I do not want to do an external. What should I look for and what should I stay away from? Also any advice on installing the new one would be great, I am hearing I should "clone" the new to the old before taking out the old drive?

Thanks!
 
First, determine whether the drive is IDE/PATA or SATA (Paralell drive or serial drive). If it's IDE/PATA there aren't that many being offered for sale anymore and it may be worth considering an external hard disk.

Go for a name make, they are all much a muchness though some will argue some brands are better than others in my experience any differences are minute.

Try Samsung; Seagate; Western Digital, Hitachi.

Software such as Acronis True Image will enable you to clone your existing disk before making your new disk the primary. There may be other software that's free available to do the job, I hear Seagate offer their version of the Acronis software for free at their website but I don't know for sure.

Unfortunately hard disk prices have just risen a great deal thanks to widespread flooding in the main country of manufacture so a modest 500Gb disk will at the moment set you back about £115.00.

Here's a link at one supplier to give you an idea: http://www.ebuyer.com/store/Storage/cat/Hard-Drive---Internal
 
Thanks! It looks like it is a SATA drive which is good! I will see what I can find for a good deal with the crazy prices going on right now.
 
Seagate do indeed offer a cut down version of Acronis for use with their products alone.
Clonezilla is a very good free alternative and is fairly straight forward to use as long as you read the instructions.

:cool:
 
I am thinking about the WD Caviar Green 1TB hard drive. How do I know if this is compatible with my PC? (Yes I do want 1TB for photos and yes I do still back-up!) :D

Also, would I need another SATA cord so I can connect both drives to clone? What about power cord? Sorry for my ignorance, I have never done this before!
 
There are a few issues with transferring information.

You can clone the drive.
http://clonezilla.org/downloads.php

However, this causes the new drive to have a partition setup exactly like the source (your 80GB drive) on the target (1TB). This means that your OS partition is 80GB and you effectively have 920GB "hiding". This is not a huge deal, as you can allocate that space to a secondary drive and use that as storage, etc. The downside is that you now have two drives configured on one physical. If the drive fails, you will lose both partitions.

In your situation, if you can install it as such, I would recommend just adding the new 1TB drive to the system and keeping the 80GB for Windows use completely. This allows you to separate your Windows installation and your data. What that means is, if you get a virus, you can wipe the 80GB Windows installation drive and not lose data from the 1TB drive. If the 80GB drive fails, you do not lose data. Buy a new drive, install Windows and then configure your system to your liking, data intact.

TL;DR - I would not install the 1TB drive as an OS drive. Add it to the system and use it for storage and backup.
 
OK, now I am getting more confused! If I install this as a secondary drive, do I run into any issues with power supply or anything else? That sounds like it may be the best option from what you described, but I will have constant back-up of everything anyway. Also, since this is an older computer that I am just trying to keep alive and save $$$ if the HD does crash, I would probably get a new PC.

Thanks for the help, sorry I keep asking so many basic questions!
 
no worries. that's exactly why we are here. No need to be confused.

Your power supply should be enough to power another HD. Typically, this is not an issue until you get into the large number of disks or a high powered graphics adapter (sometimes more than one). Even then, you would need to max out every available port on your machine (most likely) to come to the point where your PS would be insufficient. A single HD doesn't draw much power on it's own.

I hope that helps.
 
Just adding the new disk for storage and keeping Operating System on existing 80Gb disk is a good idea.

You will need an extra data cable for the new disk, order/purchase the lead when you get the new disk.

Before you buy a new disk though take a look inside your computer and make sure there's a spare power connector for the new disk on the power supply. If it only has a spare 4 pin connector you'll need to get a converter power lead to take power from the four pin molex connector to the SATA socket on the new disk.

Also take a look at the motherboard and make sure there's a spare SATA slot to take the data cable from the new hard disk.

When you've fitted the disk you'll need to format it, which is done within device manager and varies a little between different versions of Windows. I'll assume you're using Windows and not a Linux distro.
 
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