JS said:
It sounds like your PC's BIOS does not support 48Bit LBA.
(support for drives larger than 137GB) (SNIP)
JS
http://www.pagestart.com
Tom:
I'm virtually certain that your HP desktop PC supports large-capacity hard
drives, i.e., drives > 137 GB. I really don't think there's a problem there.
I don't know why JS thinks the BIOS doesn't support such. But just in case
you may want to check this out with HP.
We'll assume your present 40 GB HDD contains the XP OS with at least one of
the Service Packs previously installed.
As previous responders to your query indicated Seagate does provide a
"DiscWizard" program which is a disk-to-disk cloning program. It's actually
an earlier version of the Acronis True Image disk cloning program. The
program will be included on the CD packaged with a retail (boxed) copy of a
Seagate HDD. If you purchased a OEM ("bare") version of the drive you can
still download the program from Seagate's site.
So basically you'll connect the new HDD in your system. It's not really
important at this point whether it's connected as a Master or Slave or on
what IDE channel. Just make sure you jumper it accordingly. We'll assume you
know how to connect a HDD.
You'll then use the DiscWizard program to clone the contents of your old 40
GB HDD to the new 160 GB one. Just make sure you've appropriately selected
(identified) the "source" disk (the one you're cloning) and the
"destination" disk (the recipient of the clone, i.e., the 160 GB drive).
*Immediately* following the (hopefully!) successful disk-cloning operation
disconnect your old 40 GB HDD and, if necessary, connect your new HDD as
Primary Master in your system. Again, make sure you've correctly jumpered
the disk and properly connected it in your system. DO NOT BOOT THE SYSTEM
WITH BOTH DRIVES CONNECTED IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING THE DISK-CLONING OPERATION.
Then you can boot with only the 160 GB HDD connected. Following this you can
reconnect the 40 GB HDD as a Slave device on either IDE channel or Master on
the Secondary IDE channel. Again, make sure your drives are properly
jumpered and securely connected.
Hopefully all should go well although I have to tell you that we have run
into problems using Seagate's DiscWizard program in the past. The
disk-cloning program we use nearly exclusively these days for situations
like yours and as a comprehensive routine backup program is the Casper 5
program. So we haven't had much recent experience with the Seagate program.
But judging from the reports I've come across apparently many users find
that the Seagate program works just fine for situations like yours.
Anna
