Hi I'm 62 years of age and a newbie as far as computers go. I recently purchased a 160gb Barracuda 7200.10 Hard drive (thinking it would fit my computer) was a bit surprised when i saw the connectors and realised that it wasn't the same as my ide connector on my Dell Optiplex GX150. My problem is can I still use this hard drive? and what do I need to make it work? I have a Maxtor 40gig hard drive at the moment but it seems that its on the way out get a warning message at start of boot sequence that it operating out side of its parametters. So hence the purchase of the new hard drive.. I seem to have 2 options one is to spend some money on buying stuff so that it will work in my PC or secondly to stick it on ebay and hope to get my money back. Trouble is I am retired and living on a tight budget and its so confusing knowing what to buy. Any help will be gratefully received. As I have already stated my PC is a Dell Optiflex GX150 it has 512 mb of Ram and the operating System is Windows XP Pro service pk2
You could consider a SATA card for your PC. It plugs into a PCI slot on the motherboard and provides SATA plugs for you. I'm not sure how much Hard Drives go for on eBay. This is the kind of thing I was thinking of: Buy SATA & IDE PCI Controller Card NL-SATAPCI from CCL - Online Retailer of the Year 2007 & 2006 for laptops, desktops and computer hardware You mention your PC runs XP Sp2, are you aware that when you replace a hard drive XP will be lost, along with all your personal files? I'm not sure if Dell provides an XP disc so you can re-install everything or not.
thank you Thomas for your reply... Its not the first time that i have had to reload everything, so thats not a problem, have the discs to load xp home and an up grade disc for xp pro. Got a few bugs from the internet and to format my hard drive in order to get rid of them, downloaded pc spydoctor and macrovirus but unfortunately after loading everything up on it and on the reboot got an error message from the motherboard ( I presume) there is nothing i cant reinstall on this hard drive so thats not a problem any files can be copied to a 4gig USB memory stick drive. After i buy the card will i need any other cables ? ie power and data and where and how do they connect or is it all self explanitory
New 3 Ports SATA + 1 IDE PCI Controller Card uk this is on ebay buy it now for £1.45 p is this the right one
Yes you would need a SATA Cable (one may come with the SATA card), and also SATA HDD's use a different power input (I don't know why!). You can cheaply buy adapters for the power, and SATA Cables.
you also need to slipstream the SATA drivers into your XP CD to recognize the full 160Gb, by default XP only addresses (sees) 137Gb of HDD space BTW: here is a good slipstreaming how to
Are you sure?? I thought that was Windows 2000 which had that limit? I've never had to slipstream an XP CD to get my 200gb SATA HDD recognised and have the whole 200gb.
i was until you posted that thankies for correcting me, it could be W2k, but i did think XP was also a victim of the 137Gb barrier :dunno now: but as you have a 200Gb SATA HDD with an unslipstreamed CD i have no choice but to agree, however, there are a few hot fixes (for example - selected hardware drivers)
After doing a bit of research, I found we're both correct in a way, but more so you. XP with no service packs has the 137gb limit, but anything which is SP1 or above doesn't have that limit. Personally I didn't have to slipstream my XP disc with SP2, as it came with it on. So to make this clear sjh20502, if your XP disc has Service pack 1, 2 or 3 on, then you won't need to slipstream anything, although I recommend you upgrade to Service Pack 3 when you have installed. However, if you have one of the very original XP discs then you will need to go through the process of slipstreaming, and the link donkey sent you is helpful.
thankies, so, rereading my post i was accidentally right, because i didn't quote a service pack, but, that also made me wrong:doh: BTW: i forgot the thank you originally, so, you've got to have 2 thanks[ot]not my decision, my haunted cig lighter made me do it[/ot] Edit: he already has XP SP2 Edit: so, i was wrong to post what i posted, in hindsight
No, you were correct to post it. He has Xp Pro SP2 installed, but SP2 could have been installed afterwards. His XP Pro disc might not have any service packs on!
Just to clear the software thing up I have copies of both Xp home and xp Pro and also a copy of XP Service pack 2 from Microsoft which they sent me free of charge. On a clean install I usually install XP Pro as an upgrade so I have to start off with Xp Pro and then it asks for xp home after a while it asks me to insert the XP Pro disc and finishes the install, after everythings loaded I then insert the xp service pack2. If I load xp home and then sevice pack 2 it wont let me upgrade to xp Pro tells me that the version I have is better than the one I'm trying to install . Trust me I have done this before. I will however take your advice and purchase the PCi card and it comes with sata cable but no power converter cable so will have to buy that seperate. Wont be around for a week as I'm off to hospital tomorrow for a knee replacement, So thanks once again for your help and I'll let you know how everything turns out with the install.
Ok, but it is important that you "slipstream" your XP home disc with at least service pack one, if it doesn't have it on. Otherwise your hard drive will only be recognised as 137gb.
Yes, to clarify, you WILL have to slipstream with your XP Home disc since you have to install using IT 1st and is pre SP1 (due to you using an upgrade path to XP Pro and THEN SP2). As the only way you don't have to slipstream your OS disc is if IT (the 1ST OS cd you install on your new SATA HD) is SP1, SP2 or SP3 otherwise the OS from thereon will only see the 137Gb limit of the pre SP1 OS cd regards, manic49er
