to flash or not to flash?

[kr236rk]

hi,

am about to install second hard drive in a P3 computer [XP Home Upgrade SP3] and wondered if i should update the BIOS first please?

this is relatively ancient tech and the motherboard [ASUS P3V133] handbook tells me to do all this by way of floppy discs - it looks quite daunting to a first-timer so i thought i'd ask first

think ASUS are still around and i might just find a BIOS update for this mobo? the other term for 'Update Bios' seems to be 'Flash the Drive' - ?

advice appreciated

thanks

Ric

 

[Ste]

Install the hard drive first, and if it isn't detected or some other problem occurs, then flash BIOS.

 

[S0ULphIRE]

The general rule is unless you notice a problem, don't bother flashing the BIOS.

 

[kr236rk]

thanks guys - that simplifies things beautifully!

will update

R

 

[kr236rk]

update

well it went ok

but i first i installed the new drive with the 'cable select' jumper and the pc read this as 2 primary HDD's and stalled at the BIOS window, so i hastily removed the new drive and removed its jumper, then the pc read it as secondary drive and i was clear to format it - formatted in about 30 seconds which completely amazed me - i was expecting a 12 hour format on a 10 year old P3 :-o

so now i have a 160GB HDD on a pc which turned up sparkly new with a 15GB HDD, i would never have thought this possible ~ many thanks to all at this site!

am itching to save some multi-tracking to this new drive to see if the system expansion has eased up on mixing: the overburdened C drive was struggling with more than 2 track mixes but it could be the processor

still, even 2 tracks are a boon - i can't use the other pc's for mic track stuff, one is another noisy XP - and needs to stay put for the printer and other projects - and the Vista is unreliable till i update to Win7

many thanks again!

 

[S0ULphIRE]

^For future reference, when doing the format there are two options.
1. Full format. Completely erases everything on your hdd with zeroes
2. Quick format. Just overwrites the hard drives tables so it thinks there's no data on the hdd.

For most situations do a quick format, but if you're going to be selling the drive do a full format.

 

[KSoD]

I have to disagree with Soul on this. I go with the 3rd option. Never use Quick as it is junk and always go with full. Quick formats are like sending the information to the Recycle Bin and upon a reinstall the junk can still cause issues for a new install. Do a full format or format with Gparted.

 

[kr236rk]

thanks

just dicovered the P3 is running on 2/3 RAM so there are further performance improvements down the line!

meanwhile Windows is installing a massive security update to the old C drive without giving me the chance to select drives - only hope i can track this Service Pack stuff down and manually switch it to the new D drive

every time i free up the C drive, Windows delivers ...

[sigh]