Be sure when you boot to install Win7 on the new drive that you boot from the DVD, not your old C: drive. Otherwise your new drive will be D: and you can't change that. Boot from DVD, install win7 on new drive and then when it reboots as part of the install process it will see itself as drive C: forever after.
>BIOS -- got it. Thanks.
>
>>No more jumpers, but you have to select the new drive as a boot device in the BIOS. And you must set the old HD as not bootable.
>>
>>>Sounds like a good approach. I have not been inside this PC before and need to make sure it has a spare drive bay.
>>>
>>>The last time I added a hard drive I had to play around with jumper switches to let the machine know which drive was primary and which was secondary. Is that still the way it works?
>>>
>>>>What I usually do, is to mount a new hard drive, and install everything from scratch on this HD. I keep my old HD as D:, which means that I am easily able to restore important files from it later.
>>>>
>>>>>My main home computer has accumulated enough junk that it has become a little iffy, even after a recent upgrade to Windows 7 Ultimate. Installs and uninstalls are particularly dicey. Also, the hard drive is only 160 GB and down to about 30 GB free. I am considering two alternatives. One is to migrate everything to what has been a spare computer used only for developmentm making the current main computer the spare. The other is to buy a bigger hard drive and start fresh on that. The purpose of this post is to do a sanity check on the plan if I take door number two. Am I missing anything here? ---
>>>>>
>>>>>1. Back up everything from the current HD to an external USB hard drive. This is already happening. The USB drive has backups from Norton Ghost and a daily automated backup by Backup4All. For good measure, I use Carbonite to keep everything backed up on the internet.
>>>>>2. Test that I have a bootable DVD disc. I think the Ghost install/recovery disc will do.
>>>>>3. Replace the hard drive.
>>>>>4. Reinstall Windows 7 clean.
>>>>>5. Reinstall applications.
>>>>>6. Restore data files from the external HD.
>>>>>
>>>>>Any gotchas I should be aware of or am overlooking?
>>>>>
>>>>>Also, if I do buy a new hard drive, any recommendations of sellers?
>>>>>
>>>>>Thanks!
Charles Hankey
Though a good deal is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened.
- Thomas Hardy
Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm-- but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.
-- T. S. Eliot
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.
- Ben Franklin
Pardon him, Theodotus. He is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.
