Never bought new hard drive before

electricmuso

electricmuso

electricmuso

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Joined
18 Sep 2009
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4
Hi.

I've never bought a new hard drive before.
When I built my current PC I used my old hard drive to save money. I'm planning to buy a new hard drive as the old one is ridiculously small now (150gb). I'm also planning to move to windows 7 as well (I've resisted so far but microsoft seem to have finally twigged I'm running a slightly dodgy copy of XP so it seemed like a logical time to upgrade). I use my PC almost exclusively for gaming.

Three questions:

I'm assuming it'd be easiest to install the new hard drive and then install windows 7?

What are the key tech specs you need to look at with hard drives to make sure it works with the rest of your hardware (I'm almost certainly not going to go for an SSD, mainly a cost thing)? I'm assuming it's mainly to do with what motherboard you have (mine's a ASUS M3A32-MVP)?

I'm basically going to start from scratch with my software and just re-install what I need but what's the easiest way of moving the few files I do want from my old hard drive (mainly music) to the new one?

Any help/advice greatly appreciated guys :)
 
I would do the install as you state then just plug the old drive in ghetto style and copy the files over that you need then unplug and ditch the old one.
 
Tech wise, compatibility shouldn't be an issue assuming it's a new-ish mobo, in any case SATA III is backwards compatible with Sata II. It's just about RPM really (7,200 if you're using for OS + main)

As Speckle said, easiest way to copy data from old to new is plug the old one in once you're up and running and copy and what you want.

How else would you plan on installing the hard drive, windows 7 then hard drive? :p Just stick the HDD in, boot up from a flash drive or CD/DVD install windows and you're good to go.


edit; http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/M3A32MVP_DeluxeWiFiAP/#specifications your mobo only supports sata 3gbps (SATA II), SATA III drives will work though if you wish to buy one.
 
Always best to install Windows with only one hard drive connected, add other drives after the install is complete.
 
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