Hard Drive Help Needed

[KHolleger Junior Member Find all posts View Profile Close KHolleger]

My hard drive is getting full. I need to get a new one and would like some advice. Can I install it myself (never done it before) or pay someplace like Best Buy to do it for me? Should I get a second drive or just completely replace to the first drive?

THANK YOU!

[tonyg Goomba & Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close tonyg]

How big is your current hard drive ? It might be better to store some things on other media and just reduce the usage. I had a similar problem on my old 'puter and it was an accumulation of temporary files- so I just elimated them and made some changes to stop further accumalations.

[Keitht Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close Keitht]

If your PC has a USB port available, the simplest way is to purchase an external hard drive. All you have to do is plug it in and away you go. No need to open the case and no need to get anybody else to install it for you.

[Icarus Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Icarus]

My hard drive is getting full. I need to get a new one and would like some advice. Can I install it myself (never done it before) or pay someplace like Best Buy to do it for me? Should I get a second drive or just completely replace to the first drive?

THANK YOU!

Is this for a laptop or a desktop? In either case, if it's your boot drive (which it will be if it's your only hard drive), you're going to need a program to copy over the contents of the old drive to the new drive and then make the new drive bootable. Then you have to install it in the computer and/or switch some jumpers on both hard drives, which involves opening the computer if it's a desktop system. At the end of the process, if your computer has two disk drive slots, you'll end up with the new drive as the boot drive and your old drive for extra storage. Once you're convinced everything got copied over, you'll be able to recover all the space on the old drive for other uses.

If it's a laptop or a desktop with only a single drive slot, you have to purchase a new drive and an external enclosure. Then you use a program to copy over all the partitions and the boot record from the old drive to the new drive, then you remove the old boot drive and replace it with the new one. The old drive becomes external storage you can use with any computer.

If your hard drive is just full of photos, music, videos that you can easily move off, then all you need to get is a second drive, which can be internal or external.

If you need to replace the boot drive that can be done yourself, but it involves some tinkering and we'll need to know the details of your computer to guide you further.

If you're technically inclined, it's not that difficult to do it yourself. If opening the computer scares the heck out of you, then you should pay somebody to do it for you. In all cases, you'll need to make sure you back up all important data before you do it yourself or allow somebody else to do it for you, just in case there's a mishap and everything has to be installed from scratch.

-David

[lawren2 Malibu Beach Barbie & A Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close lawren2]

I just added an 160G external hard drive to our desktop.

Moved my son's games and my music to it. It was very very easy to do. It took less than 90 minutes including the formatting of the new drive.

I bought a Fantom. After the $50 rebate it cost $60.

[gophish Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close gophish]

I agree with what folks have been telling you about external drives. They are extremely easy to set up and provide the extra storage that many of us find we need.
That being said most computers have a second bay available for an additional internal hard drive and you can generally get an equivilent size internal drive for less money than an external drive.
Opening up the box and installing a new second drive is not all that difficult if you are comfortable with working around your computer. Again as others have told you if you are going to make this drive your boot drive you need to be able to copy everything over exactly as is including the Operating System or you need to start over and reinstall the OS on the new drive and then copy over the other info.
The easiest two possibilities are to:
1. Acquire an external hard drive for additional storage plug it in and go.
2. Acquire an additional internal hard drive and install it as the secondary or slave drive.

[Keitht Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close Keitht]

Whilst the plan of action suggested by Icarus is certainly one that could be taken, it really does look like taking a sledgehammer to crack a nut. The probability is that the hard drive has been filled with photos, document files, new programs etc.
Photo and document files can simply be dragged and dropped from the current drive to a new internal or external drive. Assuming disks for the programs are available, these can be removed, using Add/Remove Programs in Control Panel and re-installed on the new drive.
It may also be a case of the drive getting filled up with temporary Internet files if they aren't purged at shutdown.
There are many other ways to clear space on the boot drive, normally C:, before resorting to what amounts to a total rebuild.

[BoardGirl Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close BoardGirl]

While I agree that installing a second internal is a fairly simple matter, it's only simple if nothing goes wrong. Go for the external - life is too short to spend time scraping your knuckles on the inside of your pc.

[bigfrank Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close bigfrank]

If you act fast like with in the hour. Today's Smack of the day is a 250 gig external Hard drive on www.jellyfish.com

http://www.jellyfish.com/sotd