I'm running out of disk space, and given how cheap new hard drives are, I figured I'd upgrade. But I don't know where to start; do I just crack open my PC's case and plug it in, or is there more to it?
It all depends on whether you want to replace your current hard disk or simply augment it with a second drive. If your PC has an unoccupied drive bay and your old hard disk isn't an antique, it's much easier to install the new drive as a second hard disk. But if you're using a laptop, for instance, and there's only room for one drive, or if your current drive is so old that its capacity is measured in megabytes instead of gigabytes, you'll want to replace the old drive with the new one. The course you choose also determines whether or not you'll need to move all your data to the new drive, a process that can be a bit of an ordeal.
Whether you're replacing or augmenting, you'll need to connect both drives to your PC at the same time. Doing so means fussing with cables and changing tiny jumpers. Consult the documentation that came with your PC and drives for details, or visit the drive manufacturer's web site for instructions.
So that Windows will still boot, connect the new drive such that your old unit is still configured as the primary hard disk. When adding a new IDE/PATA drive, for instance, you can configure it as a "master" or "slave" device: for now, leave the old drive as the master and configure the new drive typically by setting a jumper on the back of the unit as a slave. (The master and slave designations are used to prevent conflicts; a single IDE cable should never have more than one master or slave.)
Note: Make sure the controller to which you connected the new drive is set to "Auto detect" in your system BIOS. Otherwise, your PC won't see the drive, and neither will Windows.
If you're installing an SATA drive, just connect it to a free SATA port. If you're adding a second SCSI drive, leave the old drive set to SCSI ID 0 and set the new drive to ID 1. (Depending on your setup, you may have to temporarily disconnect your CD drive to make room for the new hard disk on the IDE or SCSI chain.)
When you're done and you've closed up your PC, start Windows. Go to --> Start --> Run, and type diskmgmt.msc to open the Disk Management utility. In the lower pane, right-click the box labeled "Unallocated" (which represents your new drive), and select New Partition. (If you don't see an unallocated drive, your new disk may already be partitioned and formatted, which means you can skip this step.)
Note: If you have a laptop or a micro desktop PC, odds are you won't find any free slots or drive bays. In this case, your best bet is to temporarily install your new drive in an external enclosure and connect it to your PC with a USB 2.0 or FireWire cable .
n the New Partition Wizard, select "Primary partition" and then specify the maximum capacity for the partition size. (Chances are the system has already calculated this number for you.) Next, select "Assign the following drive letter" and choose a drive letter that you'll remember from the list, such as J . On the Format Partition page, select "Format this partition with the following settings," choose NTFS for the filesystem, and leave the other settings on the page unchanged.Click Finish when you're done. Depending on the speed and size of the drive, it may take Disk Management a while to format the drive anywhere between a minute and half an hour. When formatting is complete, right-click the new drive in Disk Management and select "Mark Partition as Active."
If all you wanted to do was augment your existing storage, you're essentially done. You can begin saving stuff to your new drive, or even move existing files by dragging and dropping them in Windows Explorer (hold the Shift key to move instead of copy).
If, on the other hand, you want to replace your old drive with this new one, you'll need to copy everything from the old drive to the new one. This can be tricky, for several reasons. For one, there's more to a Windows installation than just the files; the boot loader, is installed on your disk's boot sector and can't be copied. Also, Windows won't let you copy files that are in use, so you can't simply drag and drop all of the folders on drive C : to copy them to your new drive J :.
Fortunately, there are a few workarounds that solve these problems:
Norton Ghost
The easiest solution is to use a disk imaging utility such as Norton Ghost, available at AntiVirus, Anti-Spyware, Endpoint Security, Backup, Storage Solutions | Symantec Corp. ; check out the "Enterprise" section on the Downloads page for a free trial. Use Ghost to create an "image" of your old hard disk, and then restore the image to the new drive. When you're done, you'll have an exact copy of your original drive, complete with all the necessary boot information. All that's left to do is to remove the old drive and set the new one as the primary drive (i.e., set your IDE drive to "master" or your SCSI drive to ID 0).
Note: Store the image file on the old drive, not the new one. For Ghost to restore it, the target drive must be empty. If you don't have enough space on the old drive for the image, divide the new drive into two partitions with the Disk Management utility. Save the image file on the second partition, and then use Ghost to restore the image onto the first partition .
Back up and restore
If you have a tape backup or other device capable of storing the entire contents of your hard disk, use it to do a full system backup. Then, just restore the backup onto the new drive. When you're done, shut down the PC, unplug the old drive, put the new one in its place, and start your PC. If Windows won't start, you'll need to write the master boot record to the new drive.
Start from the beginning
Your final option is to install the new drive as the primary master drive, install a fresh copy of Windows XP on the drive, and then install all your applications. Next, connect your old drive as the "slave," and copy over your data files. Don't forget the stuff in your My Documents folder (usually found at \Documents and
Settings\{username}\My Documents ), plus the contents of your desktop (\Documents and Settings\(username}\Desktop ) and extras such as your email and web browser bookmarks (typically found in \Documents and Settings\{username}\Application Data ) and your IE Favorites (\Documents and Settings\{username}\Favorites ). Keep your old drive connected for a few weeks (if practical), until you're sure you've gotten everything.
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