The best way of upgrading and enlarging computer hard drive storage
Posted in Hard Drive Upgrade by manyu time 1 Oct
If you don’t plan to purchase a new computer,just want to upgrade it and enlarge the hard drive capability of storage,at this time you can achieve your plans though hard drive upgrade,but it can be a difficult task for some users and while there are a few things you need to know, it can easily be done by anyone.
 First you may be know about the types of hard drives
Currently on the market there are two main types of hard drives available to the mainstream market. IDE or Integrated Drive Electronics and SATA which is Serial Advanced Technology Attachment. IDE is currently far more prevalent, as this is what has been used for years. For SATA there are two kinds and you will want to know for sure what kind you have. There is the original standard, SATA 1.5gbs or 150mb per second and there is the 3gbs or 300 mb per second. The latter is very new as of this writing but the good news is that 3gbs drives are backwards compatible with the older 1.5gbs SATA machines.
Installing the hard drive
SATA
 The beauty of SATA is that it’s super simple to install. The cables will not allow you to install it incorrectly. So to install an SATA drive is simply a matter of hooking up the cables and screwing the drive into place in a 3.5in bay in your machine. Hook up the power cable that came with the drive and hook up the data cable. Consult the installation manual of course and then power on the machine. You should be ready to roll.
 IDE Drive SATA Drive
IDE Drives
This is what many folks will already have that are looking to expand drive space. IDE is a little more complex. There are allot of rules governing installation and every new drive comes with an easy to read and understand guide for installation. However, there are a few things to watch out for. This is particularly true when adding a new drive to a system that already has a drive in it. So, as this guide only allows me 10,000 words I’m going to refer you to the installation instructions that come with the drive and give you some tips on dealing with drives that do not seem to show up once installed.
1. Use the cable that is in your machine first. There is an exception to this rule for much older machines like a Pentium 3 or older. There are two kinds of cables for IDE drives, the older kind are called 40 wire cables. They have 40 wires and 40 pins. The newer kind, which come with just about every new hard drive you will purchase, are called 80 wire. They look almost identical but the wires on the 80 wire cable are much smaller. There are still 40 pins and both types of cables will fit into your machine. However some older machines don’t like the 80 wire cables. On the flip side of that, some drives don’t like the 40 wire cables. If you have trouble you may have to experiment with which cable will work for you the best. Also, the cables for an IDE drive are keyed. If you look closely at the picture below you can see that there is a little square peice of plastic in the middle of the connector. There is a cut out on the drive itself to accommodate this key. Some older cables don’t have this key and will allow you to install it improperly. This shouldn’t hurt your PC or the drive but the machine may not boot properly when inserted incorrectly.
IDE Cable 40 wire SATA Cable
2. Your IDE cable cannot be longer than 18 inches. Most cables aren’t but it’s a good idea to check.SATA cables can be 40 inches long however.
3. Jumper your drive accordingly. Read the directions to do this, but know this, if you have a drive in the machine that you don’t intend to take out, it is usually set as the master the new drive should be set to slave.
4. Keep the drives together on the same cable. Don’t mix a drive with a CD or DVD rom. This can slow the drive down to the speed of the CD rom in some cases. Unless you have no CD ROMs in the machine, this is best way to go.
5.Check the manual for your original drive. This is really important when the new drive won’t show up or after installing your new drive your machine won’t boot up properly. The reason for this is that even with newer drives, not all manufacturers use the same jumpering scheme. Sometimes the original drive needs to be set to a specific jumper setting when another drive is present. Take the old drive out, look at the sticker on top and go to the DRIVE manufacturer’s website to download manuals. Seagate, Western Digital and other major drive makers have a huge library of manuals and instructions going way back in time just for this purpose. These days, many new hard drives come with a CD rom that has this information already on it. Even for older drives.
6. Each drive needs power. Make sure that you have power to each drive. There are two cables per drive. The data cable and the power cable. If you don’t have them both attached, the drive will not show up at all.
7. Read the manual and use the CD rom that came with your drive. This is important to do because even once you get the drive in properly, you still need to partition the drive and format it as well. The CD will usually have utilities and instructions for this.
8. Make use of the free support that comes with your new drive. Your machine may be out of warranty but your new drive isn’t. So if you run into trouble make sure to use the expertise of the folks who help people install these 50 times a day. They are usually able to get you up and running quickly or can point you in the right direction. Hold times are usually low so go ahead and give them a call.
In fact, through the above learning,Hard drive upgrade is not difficult, As long as you have enough care and patience, you can do it by yourself.
References: http://reviews.ebay.com
