1. How To Install A New Hard Drive To Replace An Old One Sample Instructional Guide Odetta Rodriguez – Week 5

2. Install A New Hard Drive To Replace An Old One Hard drive space isn’t infinite. Today’s massive drives, with capacities exceeding 1TB, can create that illusion. But as drive sizes increase, ways to consume drive capacity also expand. HD video, for example, can eat gigabytes for breakfast.

3. Identifying The Proper Replacement Before you can upgrade a hard drive with a new replacement you’ll need to determine the type of drive you need to buy. Today, most hard drives use a data connection known as SATA. However, computers that are several years old might instead support a data connection called IDE. You can easily tell the difference between the two because an IDE connection uses numerous pins, while SATA uses a pin-less L-shaped connector. The picture below provides a comparison – the SATA drive is on the left and the IDE drive is on the right. Laptop drives will obviously be smaller, but have the connections have the same appearance.

4. Size Matters Speaking of size, you’ll also need to make sure you buy a drive with the correct physical dimensions. There are two popular hard drive sizes – 3.5″ and 2.5″. The larger is built for desktop systems, while the smaller is generally for laptops and compact desktops. However, solid state hard drives often come in the 2.5″ size regardless of the type of machine they’re meant to be installed in. This rule isn’t absolute, however, because some all-in-one computers use 2.5″ drives.

5. Transferring Data From The Old To New Drive The process of installing a new hard drive is one of the least difficult hardware installation procedures around in terms of the physical effort required. However, the hard drive is one of the most critical components in your system because it stores all of your information. Everything from your operating system to your emails to your favorite songs are stored on your hard drive. Obviously, a straight replacement will leave you without that information.

6. Transferring Data From The Old To New Drive

7. Backing Up Data For Transfer XXCLONE (Windows) XXCLONE.com XXCLONE XXCLONE is Windows software. The tool can create a self- bootable clone of a Windows drive as well as full backups of non-system volumes. Basically, it can make a hard drive image. The interface is basic and clear. When started, the tool scans for available volumes and you can then choose a source and target volume from these. A direct link to the Windows Disk Management is provided through the “diskmgmt” button. Under the “Tool Cools” tab you can make use of options such as making the target volume self-bootable, manage restore points or create a batch file to save your current settings for future re-use. The download section of the website provides a thorough help file that contains screenshots and descriptions of all features.download section

8. Cloning If you’re using a computer that has more than one hard drive bay you’ll find the process of transferring g data from one drive to another to be easy. All you need to do is install the second hard drive in your system and then clone an image of your existing drive using one of the manythen clone an image of your existing drive freeware tools available for this task. Once the old drive’s image has been cloned and placed on the new drive, you can simply remove the old drive or reformat it and use it as a second drive (make sure the clone was successful before taking this step, however!) Computers that have only a single drive bay are more difficult to work with because you can’t have the new and old drive installed at the same time.You can, however, still clone your old drive to your new one. This is possible by connecting your new drive to your PC with a USB- to-SATA cable or an external hard drive dock. Cloning a drive may take some time because of the bandwidth limitations of USB 2.0, but it will complete eventually.as a second driveUSB- to-SATA cable external hard drive dock

9. Replacing The Old Drive Desktop computer hard drives are usually placed in the lower front half of a mid-tower enclosure and are attached using between two and six screws. The process isn’t overly difficult, but is detailed enough to warrant its own post. Laptops are different, but easier. Most laptops will offer a plastic hard drive bay cover on the bottom of the laptop that is held in with one or two screws. Removing the cover will reveal the drive, which is itself typically attached with a few screws. Installing a replacement drive is simply a matter of taking the existing drive out and putting the new drive in its place. The power and data connections are built into the mount itself, so you don’t have to worry about tracking down the cables. Please note that not all laptops are intended to be user serviceable in this way, so please read your laptop’s manual for information about hard drive replacement before proceeding.

10. Booting & Partitioning Once you’ve replaced your old drive you will, of course, want to boot up your PC to make sure everything is functioning well. Assuming you did clone your data from your old drive to your new once, this process should be painless. Your PC will barely realize that anything has changed. You should probably visit the Disk Management utility, which can be found by visiting the Administrative Tools –> Computer Management section of the Windows Control Panel, to ensure that Windows is recognizing and using all of your new hard drive’s capacity. If it isn’t, you can extend the current partition to cover the free space or create a new drive partition. If you didn’t end up cloning your drive, this step will be irrelevant, as you’ll have to format and partition the new drive during the installation process of your operating system.

11. References Smith, M. (2011). How to Install a New Hard Drive to Replace an Old One. Retrieved Fhttp://www.makeuseof.com/tag/install-hard-drive- replace/rom: XXCLONE.com (2012). Version 2.00.3, Released 2012-01-20 Pixelab, Inc.