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Installing and Configuring Your
New Hard Drive (Pt.
3)
Get
connected! Before I present this final article about installing and configuring
your new hard drive (and configuring your system to properly recognize the old
drive), I wanted to let you know that beginning with our next issue of
Everything Office, I'll be discussing topics that have to do with networking.
These will include information about firewalls, network security, hacking and
how to network the computers in your office or home.
Although it is
relatively easy to set up and configure a new drive, because there is a number
of issues that must be addressed in order to do this properly, it has not been
possible for me to discuss each of them in detail. In order to keep these
articles relatively brief, I've had to do some generalizing, so if you have one
or more specific questions to which you would like answers, please
email me.
Please visit our
Newsletter
Archives, to review the previous three articles about choosing and
installing a new hard drive, as well as transferring your data (or your entire
system) from your old to your new drive.
The specific issue that I
will be discussing in this final article deals primarily with how to configure
your old drive in order to get your computer to properly recognize it as the
correct drive letter. If you have decided to keep that old drive as a place to
store files or backups of files, you may have a problem unless you follow these
instructions.
Remember, if you will be setting up your new drive using
the special 40pin/80 wire data cable that came with your drive (thus taking
advantage of the high-speed 66MB/sec. transfer rate of the drive), I recommend
that you do NOT connect your old drive or your CD-ROM to your mainboard (or the
adapter card you purchased if your mainboard does not support the ATA-66
specification) using the cable to which your new drive is connected. The
preferred method in this instance is to set the jumper on your new drive as
master/stand-alone and connect it to the PRIMARY BUSS on the adapter card or
mainboard. Then, using the 40 pin/40 wire cable already inside your computer,
connect your old drive (set to master/stand-alone) and your CD-ROM (set to
slave) to the SECONDARY BUSS on the card or mainboard. Keep in mind that none
of the drives connected to the adapter card will not be recognized by your
mainboard's BIOS, but will be recognized by the BIOS on the adapter card.
Once this is complete and your BIOS recognizes the drives properly,
it's a matter of following my previous instructions with regard to formatting
and installing the operating system and/or transferring files. Remember, you
cannot move a Windows' based software application (i.e. Word, Excel, Netscape,
Quicken, etc.) from one drive to another by simply moving a folder. You MUST
install a Windows' based software application, just as you must uninstall it to
completely remove it. In the case of a DOS-based program, you can move the
folder(s) that contain the DOS program to a new location, but you will also
need to redirect any start-up shortcuts on your desktop or your start menu to
the new location.
Once you have all of the files, etc. transferred to
your new drive, my recommendation is that you disconnect your old drive (even
just temporarily) from your computer for several days to make sure everything
works properly. This may require that you reset the jumper on the primary drive
back to a 'stand alone', but not necessarily. Try it first without resetting
the jumper. If your computer won't recognize the drive properly, or won't boot,
reset the jumper to 'stand alone' or 'off' (see your drive instructions).
The reason I recommend this is a matter of security, because the next
task you should perform is to repartition and format your old drive. Once you
repartition that drive, all of the data previously installed on it is GONE
FOREVER! If something isn't working properly or you forgot some files that you
wanted or needed, you'll still be able to get that data if you haven't
partitioned and/or formatted the old drive. So, have a little patience and wait
a week.
When you are sure that all is well and that you have
everything you need from your old drive, reconnect it to your computer as
described above and in
previous
articles. Place your Windows Start Up floppy disk (boot disk) in your 'A
drive' and boot your computer. Then you are asked if you want to start your
computer with or without CD-ROM support, choose the WITHOUT option. When the
boot is complete, it will stop at the 'A:>', called the 'A prompt'. Look for
the line of text that says, "The diagnostic tools were successfully loaded to
drive X (where X = a specific drive letter your computer will assign)".
Switch to the X drive by typing the assigned drive letter, a colon and
finally press the ENTER key (i.e. E:, then ENTER). Next type FDISK and press
ENTER. When you are asked if you wish to enable large disk support, type Y (for
Yes) and press ENTER. Where it says, ENTER CHOICE, type the number
corresponding to "Change drive" (usually number 5) and press ENTER. Now choose
your old drive (obviously the smaller of the two drives shown in the table) and
press ENTER.
Next (to be sure you have selected the correct drive), at
the ENTER CHOICE, type the number corresponding to DISPLAY PARTITION
INFORMATION and press ENTER. Look at the column MBYTES. Have you selected the
correct drive? (For example, if your new drive is 20GB and your old one is 2GB,
you'll see a total of nearly 2000 MBYTES if you looking at your old 2GB drive.
If you see 20000 MBYTES, you are on the wrong drive, so go back and pick the
correct one. When you are sure you are looking at the correct drive, press ESC
to return to the main menu.
At ENTER CHOICE, pick the number
corresponding to DELETE PARTITION OR LOGICAL DOS DRIVE (usually # 3) and press
ENTER. From this menu, type in the number 1 (DELETE PRIMARY DOS PARTITION) and
press ENTER. Where it gives you the blinking "Warning" about erasing all of
your data, followed by the question "WHAT PRIMARY PARTITION DO YOU WANT TO
DELETE?", type in the number 1 and press ENTER. Next it will ask you for the
VOLUME LABEL. Look at the table on the screen and find the VOLUME LABEL column.
If there is a label, it will be identified there, in which case type in the
name exactly as it appears in this column and press ENTER. If there is no
label, just press ENTER. Finally, you are given one last chance to abort, to
which you will answer Y (for Yes) to the question ARE YOU SURE? Press ENTER.
That's it. Everything on your old drive is gone!
[Note: If your old
drive has more than one partition, as your new drive probably does if you
followed my suggestions, you should also delete both the LOGICAL DOS DRIVE(S)
IN THE EXTENDED DOS PARTITION (first) and then the EXTENDED PARTITION itself.
You will not be able to delete the EXTENDED DOS PARTITION without first
deleting the LOGICAL DRIVE(S).]
When you have deleted all of the
partitions from your old drive, you must now create a new partition on the old
drive and then format the drive. Here is where you will help your computer
assign the correct drive letter to your old drive.
Let's use an
example to help make this easy for you to understand. You have your new 20GB
drive already partitioned and formatted. It has two partitions: a C and a D
partition (one is your primary partition, the C, and the other is your extended
partition, the D). You also have your old 2GB drive which presently has no
partitions...yet.
Here is a little secret you need to know. If you
create a new PRIMARY partition on your old drive, and then format the drive,
when you reboot your computer, your old drive will become the D drive in your
computer and the D partition of your new drive will become the E drive. This
can really mess everything up quite royally.
[For example, prior to
adding the old drive, you have your new drive with two partitions. You've
installed Windows and some new software. When you installed Netscape, you
decided to put it on your D partition (D-drive). Everything is working fine
until you add your old drive back into your computer and make the mistake of
creating a PRIMARY partition on it and formatting that partition. Now you
reboot your computer and find that Netscape won't work. Why? Because your
computer has automatically assigned the PRIMARY partition of your old drive as
the D partition (D-drive) and pushed what was formerly the D partition (where
Netscape resides) of your new drive up one drive letter to your E drive. When
you try to launch Netscape, your computer looks on your D partition (where
Netscape is supposed to be) and can't find it. Ooops!]
Solving this
problem is easy, because you know the secret. When you create a new partition
(or more than one if you wish) on your old drive, do NOT create a PRIMARY
partition. Instead, create an EXTENDED PARTITION and then create one logical
drive within the EXTENDED PARTITION. Format the logical drive within the
EXTENDED PARTITION by rebooting your computer with the WINDOWS START-UP disk
(boot disk) still in your floppy drive. When asked if you want to enable CD-ROM
support or not, choose number 2, NO CD-ROM. When you get to the A prompt
(A:>), write down the drive letter assigned to the location of the
DIAGNOSTIC TOOLS.
Now format your old drive. But how do I know which
drive letter is the correct one to format?? Well, first of all keep in mind
that until you format your old drive, it has no drive letter assigned to it and
won't until after the drive is formatted. The mistake you don't want to make is
to accidentally format one of the partitions on your new drive. In this
example, your new drive has a C and a D partition, which means you DO NOT want
to format either of these. Look on your notes and see what your wrote down as
the drive letter which your computer assigned to the DIAGNOSTIC TOOLS. In this
example, it should be your F drive. So now, you have a C, a D and an F drive.
Where is E? Ahh..it is the EXTENDED PARTITION on your old drive, waiting to be
formatted.
You can easily verify this by first typing C: and then
pressing ENTER. You will now see C:>. Now type D: and then press ENTER. Now
you will see D:>. Now type E: and press ENTER. Oh, oh, I'm getting an
"Invalid Drive" error message. Why??? Because you haven't formatted your E
drive yet (the EXTENDED partition on your old drive). Going back to your notes,
log onto the drive letter assigned to your DIAGNOSTIC TOOLS, which should be
your F drive. Now type FORMAT E: and press ENTER (that's the word FORMAT, then
a space, then the letter E, followed by a colon). A message will appear,
advising you that everything on this drive will be erased, do you want to
proceed? Answer Yes and press ENTER. When the format is complete, it will ask
for a VOLUME LABEL. You can type anything here or just leave it blank. Now
press ENTER. Done!
Remove the disk from your floppy drive and reboot.
After Windows loads, go into the Windows Explorer (not Internet
Explorer...RIGHT click on START and then choose EXPLORE or click START,
PROGRAMS and then WINDOWS EXPLORER). There you will find your C and D drives
(the two partitions on your new drive), your E drive (the partition on your old
drive) and your F drive, the CD-ROM drive. Congratulations. You did it!
We, at Office Helper, appreciate the opportunity to bring you
Everything Office. Don't forget to check out this week's
great tip on our
website. And remember, in our next issue, I'll begin a series of interesting
topics that will focus on networks, firewalls, Internet security, virus attacks
and a whole bunch of good stuff of which you really, really need to be aware.
Thanks!
Rich Poremba
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