Just ordered a new hard drive - HELP NEEDED!

[dw84uk]

I've just ordered a Seagate ST3250823A Barracuda 250GB 7200RPM ATA/100 8MB Cache

(see here http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/in...duct_uid=81595)

but am worried about if I'll be able to install it.


Seagate provide their own installation software called DiscWizard so I was checking it out in anticipation of receiving my new drive.

I got an error message saying "The drive model you entered is an ATA drive model. There are no open positions to add an ATA drive. If you wish to add an ATA drive, you must first shut down and remove one of your existing ATA devices"

At the moment I have 2 fairly old hard drives in my computer totalling 160GB. I was hoping to use this new drive as the master drive and keep the other 2 in for storage.

At the moment, I have 2 hard drives in my computer. Both are atleast 2 years old.

Device manager has called them:

WDC WD800JB-00CRA1 and
WDC WD800JB-00ETA0

I'm not sure if this helps or not.

My motherboard is a Jetway Polaris 400.

I don't even know what ATA is. It says this new drive is IDE so I thought it would work.

Does anyone know what I am meant to do when my new drive arrives on Wednesday.

Thanks

 

[jolancer]

If you wont to use it as your Master HDD with Windows installed on it, just...

Dont work inside your computer wearing sox on a rug, touch metal such as the pc casing to remove possible static charge... Check to make shur the jumper is set correctly, remove you old drive, insert your new one.... Boot using the windowsXP cd, if your CDdrive is not first in the boot order, change the setting in BIOS.

the XPcd gives you all the options to format the drive in the setup screen before installation. its very simple.

 

[dw84uk]

thanks for the reply

when i format this drive as the master drive, that means the other drive will have to be changed to be secondary?

can i do this while there is still data on the old drives?

 

[jolancer]

yes, just remember if you move your old Harddrive to a different postion on the EIDE cable, to also set the jumper on your old HD to the correct setting. (example - New 250gb jumper be set to Master(MA) - Old 80GB jumper set to Slave(SL) or (MA) if you move it to Secondary Master on the 2nd EIDE cable)

once you install windows on your new HDD your old harddrive will apear in /My Compuer, just like any other drive... so yes you can do that..... then you can also copy any data files you have and format the old HDD clean if you wont, from inside windows you can format any HDD by going to /Start/Run... type (diskmgmt.msc) hit enter... then you can right click on harddrive partitions or tabs at the bottom and select from differen options depending on what you wont to do to the drive.

and if your motherboard is like most common motherboad with 2 EIDE Controlers wich support a total of 4 devices... that means you will have all your EIDE slots filled if you also have a CD or DVDrom or something... but you could always just phisicaly unplug and switch between the 2 80GB HDDs if you just use them to store unused data files. If you run out of EIDE port...... thats what i do with my Large storage drive even though i have enough EIDE ports, cause that way my Storage HDD never age's from use, i only connect it when i rarly need to store my own personal files on it that i dont need access to.