need your help!!!!!

[Wolfeinstein]

i'm putting a computer together for first time and a new HDD.

wd 80 gig 8mb i just want to know after i turn on set the bios than what do i do with the hard drive?

Second if i have a xp home edition upgrade i have heard that if i put that in it will ask me for a original os so i just put any in there
98,2000,me,nt? and just keep conyinue with the instal?????

 

[Cjwinnit]

Screw the drive into the case (Try avoiding magnetic screwdrivers with HDD's, tends to dislike them.)

Plug the ribbon cable into the primary (IDE 1) channel on the motherboard and into the drive, make sure the jumper on the drive is set to "Cable Select". WD drives like this setting...

Plug the power cable in, then set up the rest of the computer.

Before you can use the drive, it needs to be partitioned and formatted.....

Partitioning.
Get a floppy disk and format it as a system disk. You can use any computer running Windows 95/98/ME to do this.
Put this disk into the new computer, start it up, and type "FDISK" at the prompt.
In the menu, select the disk drive, and "create a partition".
Once you have made a partition, restart the computer with the floppy disk in again.

Now it's partitioned, now:

Formatting.
In the DOS prompt type, without the speech marks:

"C:"
"Format c:"
(then answer yes).


There is your new drive


After that you can use it, but I would run SCANDISK (at the prompt) to check the drive is ok.

Once XP is installed, you can change the drive system to NTFS (it's the file system that XP prefers, you can change it to NTFS from the original without losing data.
The system used in FDISK is FAT32, it's what Windows 95, 98, and ME use. XP can use FAT32 partitions, but Microsoft advise using NTFS. If you want to convert the partition to NTFS, there is a utility called "Drive Converter" in XP.

You don't have to convert it.

if i have a xp home edition upgrade i have heard that if i put that in it will ask me for a original os so i just put any in there
98,2000,me,nt? and just keep conyinue with the instal?????

You will need to install Windows 98 (maybe Windows 95 or NT is ok), ME or 2000 to upgrade it to XP.


Good luck.

 

[Wolfeinstein]

thanks for your help!

i will have only 1 hard drive on the primaly cable and a dvd and cdrw on the secondary ide, so if i choose cable select on the hard drive do i have to choose the same on the secondary ide cable where my dvd and cdrw is????????????????

and when i partition my drive can i use the floppy that came with my drive???

 

[cw823]

thanks for your help!

i will have only 1 hard drive on the primaly cable and a dvd and cdrw on the secondary ide, so if i choose cable select on the hard drive do i have to choose the same on the secondary ide cable where my dvd and cdrw is????????????????

and when i partition my drive can i use the floppy that came with my drive???

To take a few steps out of that, just boot of your windows XP cd. You can partition and format during the install.


Use the default jumper setting for the hard drive. Not master, slave, or CS, just the default setting (WD drives are funny that way). set your DVD to master, and your CDRW to slave, or vice versa. One MUST be master, and the other slave.

Also, be sure you install the hard drive with an 80 pin cable, with the black connector (should be the one on the end) to the hard drive, blue to the motherboard.

 

[Cjwinnit]

To take a few steps out of that, just boot of your windows XP cd. You can partition and format during the install.

My post originally had that in, but he said he had an upgrade version of XP, will it still let you format and partition an empty drive?

 

[cw823]

My post originally had that in, but he said he had an upgrade version of XP, will it still let you format and partition an empty drive?

yep..my xp Home (SUCKS) lets you do everything....just asks for a win9x/nt/2k Cd at one point

 

[Cjwinnit]

Use the default jumper setting for the hard drive. Not master, slave, or CS, just the default setting (WD drives are funny that way).

Definately.

Newer WD drives come shipped set at "CS" usually. Mine did, I changed it to "Master" and it took a lot longer to be recognised in the BIOS. Needless to say, it's now at CS again.

 

[Wolfeinstein]

the default stting was cable setting should i leave it on that or change it to master????
Thanks

 

[cw823]

the default stting was cable setting should i leave it on that or change it to master????
Thanks

Whatever it says on the top of the drive is the default setting.

 

[Wolfeinstein]

you mean where the jumper was when i took it out of the box?
it was on cable setting!

 

[cw823]

you mean where the jumper was when i took it out of the box?
it was on cable setting!

Then that should be fine. The only time you would need to change it is if you add another drive on that IDE port

 

[Cjwinnit]

the default stting was cable setting should i leave it on that or change it to master????
Thanks

Should be fine, leave it.

 

[Wolfeinstein]

ok but i can leave my second ide dvd and cdrw on master and slave

 

[cw823]

ok but i can leave my second ide dvd and cdrw on master and slave

Yep