Upgrading My computer

[chevy4x4trucks]

Alright, last night I had one of my friends over who is essentially a computer guru and we were putting a new 80 gig hard drive into my computer and added 256 megs of ram since it was only 30 bucks.  Well, the ram all went in fine, but the hard drive doesn't want to work.  After about 3 hours of messing w/ it, it finally showed up in my computer and he just set it to format and said it should work when its done.  Well, it got to the end of the formatting process and then gave the error that it could not be formatted.  Anyone have any ideas?  He'd help me, but he just left for x-mas and won't be back until after new years.

[silverado man]

Reformat everything.   j/k.  i dont really know i put one in my computer, and was the first time that i have every done anything like that.  have you tried to reformat the 80gig with only that drive attached and with the jumper set to master drive. i think thats how i ended up doing mine.  but make sure when you connect your the other hard drive back up youll want to switch the 80gig to slave drive.  hope this helps im sure you friends has dont it if he is a computer guru.

[chevy4x4trucks]

I'd tell you what he all tried but I don't know, he did a bunch of different things.  The last time we had attempted to upgrade my ram we got a 512 chip, but the computer didn't like it, so we just got a 256 this time.  He did say that if it doesn't work I may have to get a new motherboard that will support it and since I have a compaq I'll need a new case as well since there's are wired strangely.  If I do this I'll wait till he's back from michigan and have him pick out what I need.  He said it would be less than 150 for a motherboard and case which isn't too bad.  I may take the old computer and set it up w/ some stuff, or sell it to my cousin, who knows.  I guess I know some about computers, just not enough, I'm learning though.

[bassdog]

Did the new hard drive come with any software? You should have to install some setup software to get the drive going.

Who makes the drive? Maxtor, Western Digital?

 

I'll take any info you can give me.

 

 

bassdog

[chevy4x4trucks]

It's a maxtor 80 gig.  My computer is about three years old,  A compaq w/ a pentium III 450, just upgraded from win98 to 2000 last weekend.  Right now I've got over 300 megs of ram and my current hard drive © is a 13 gig western digital.

 

The hard drive didn't come w/ anything but the hard drive, no instructions, no cables, no install stuff, nothing.  Oh wait, i take that back I think it had some info printed on the hard drive itself.

[chevy4x4trucks]

and we got the hardware stuff from maxtor's website, that I do remember doing.

[RyanbabZ71]

you should have a floppy.  My dad installed a western digital about a yr ago and you had to install something from a floppy also

[silverado man]

when i got my 30gig a few months ago it didnt come with anything.

[chevy4x4trucks]

Yeah, didn't come w/ anything but a hard drive and some bubble wrap, which might I add has all been popped.  My friend justin was saying that the Compaq's BIOS will only support an 8 gig hard drive which is odd cuz mine is a 13 gig.  He said if nothing else we'll trick it into thinking I have 10 8 gig hard drives.

[GreenRado]

4x4:

 

This can be a messy one as there are so many combinations of things that could be at issue.  However, if you got to and started successfully the format process, I assume your guru:

 

1) checked to see if the controller and drive were compatible and got the drive physically hooked up correctly with the right cable

2) went into the BIOS and turned on the secondary UIDE controller, if it was not already on

3) set the jumper on the drive for auto sense(if applicable)

4) ran FDISK to partition it

5) started the format process

 

It may be that there was simply a hiccup in the format process.  Did you notice how far it got? On the DOS screen, it usually keeps tally of percent formatted during the process.  Did it hang at say 50%?

 

I would try re-formatting this drive *if you are comfortable* doing this, otherwise wait as doing this wrong can wipe out your other drive, if you happen to select the wrong drive to format.

 

A related issue - are you planning to use the 13 GB drive as the system drive?  This is OK, but if the 80 GB is much faster, it might be useful to partition the 80 GB into 2 or 3 drives, and make the first logical drive on the 80GB the "active" partition, the one that will have Win 2000 on it.  It would give your system better performance in disk transfers.

 

Whatever you do, be careful, and get a second opinion on what I have said here - it has to be your choice and if you're not pretty comfortable doing these things, I'd defer.

 

Hope this helps a little.

 

Also, can't speak for Maxtor, but WD has a great tech support web-site, and if you have your model number, I am sure you can DL installation instrs, which usually are pretty good.

 

Not slamming Compac, but they are generally harder to upgrade than average - my experience only.

 

Good luck.  You can email me if you want to get into it deeper.

[chevy4x4trucks]

Essentially we did everything that you have pointed out and he started the format before he left.  Maybe we did the wrong format, cuz the one we did was in windows and not DOS.  It took about a half hour to do and it got all the way to the end before it gave me the error.

 

He also told me the downfalls of upgrading a compaq, but that doesn't do me any good now since I already own it.  After the new year I'm getting a new case and motherboard and robbing everything from the compaq and putting it in there.

[GreenRado]

4x4, that's probably the problem . . you need to format in DOS, unless Win2000 has some functionality I am not aware of.  You might check your Win2000 documentation, and also the Microsoft Website.

 

Cheers

[chevy4x4trucks]

could you give me some instructions on how to do this?  

I grew up in a windows world.  Although when I was 5 we got our first computer which was DOS, but after that it was all windows.

[GreenRado]

4x4:

 

I'll email you directly w/ more details tomorrow - gotta run!

[chevy4x4trucks]

much appreciated, I guess I can wait to then [email protected]

 

Thanks everyone for there help.