hard drive

tall one · #1 May 21st, 2003, 10:58 PM

i want to install a new harddrive in my 5000 series compaq. I have a boot disc but i have only quick restore discs that came with the unit its 3 years old. how doable is this ....will i need to copy anything from this old harddrive? thanks in advance

Dodge · #2 May 22nd, 2003, 11:53 PM

I'm not a Compaq expert by no means. But, hte only problem I could see you running into is that Compaq puts a partition on your HD that has your system files that you need for the recovery disk to work. So doing a full disk transfer may help you. If you go with a Western Digital hard drive the program they have may do what you need.

PostCode · #3 May 23rd, 2003, 12:10 AM

In my experience you may not be able to use the new hard drive as the primary drive. With some Compaq systems, the drive that is currently installed needs to be the primary. The system is looking for a hard drive of a specific size. This isn't always true though. With some systems you can use a new drive that is larger as the primary. However, copying the diagnostic partition can be a real trick to perform. Most utilities that copy drives do not see the diagnostic partition so they don't copy it over. Your best bet would be to install Windows on the new hard drive using the Restore Disks for the computer. If this dosen't work, then your probably only going to be able to use the drive as a secondary drive.

Another issue is if the system will see the hard drive for what it is. How big is the drive that you want toinstall on the computer? Some systems have limitiations as to how large of a drive it can see. With a system that is three years old, you may be looking at limitations around the 30GB barrier or possibly the 80GB barrier.

Hope this helps.

tall one · #4 May 23rd, 2003, 01:38 AM

thanks i can see given my limitations in this field of endeavor i probably would be better off buying a new computer ...any suggestions ?also i like windows 98se i suppose this option will be lost with a new system ... could i go to one of these computer places and have them build me one with windows 98 se in it? thanks again

**jtdoom** · #5 May 23rd, 2003, 02:08 AM

hi

you wanna spend 500 cuz you was bombed with bomid.

you CAN put bomid on a new drive !

FIRST thing you do is SEARCH for all *.TXT and *.DOC on the recovery CDROM

then make a utility disk ((highly likely it is not same as restore disk... )
ALSO make a restore disk

make ALL the booters you can make using files on the cdrom

then you will get rocking!

**jtdoom** · #6 May 23rd, 2003, 02:27 AM

besides...

a real clone operation transfers all
do you have norton ghost?
ghost /ib /fro /ia
(/include bootblock /forensic mode /include all partitions)

(also works with ghostpe ... )

your hard disk manufactor's advanced disktools (diskcopy/filecopy)

if you dont get it going, I will look up retrievable texts we wrote when train, greengoose, dodge, DrmDj, Rog (the dormouse), and a great number of other knowledgebbe guys discussed this bomid subject.

and hey...
!!
\/
also..
¦¦
\/

**jtdoom** · #7 May 23rd, 2003, 02:53 AM

caveat

diskclone a 6.4 Gb to a 40Gb with /ia /ib then you stand a good chance you get a clusterfijck

hub_cap · #8 May 23rd, 2003, 04:19 AM

Nortons GhostPE saved my cookies. I had a 40G WD drive wiped out by Linux (my fault). I had a ghost image of the windows partition (20G) that was about 3 months old as well as BackupMyPC backups that were about a week old.
I purchased an identical WD drive and installed as new C drive and made the old C drive the new D drive. I booted with the ghost image CD and installed the image on the new drive. It was not formated or partitioned before installing the image. It took about 4 hours to install the image (AMD XP1900 - 1.6 GHZ) with 512M memory. Then installed the backup. What a way to go!!! No looking for drivers, etc. since the image had all of the files.