Normal desktop with a relatively ordinary case. Simple.
This apply regardless of the brand and model.
If you have an ATA drive, set the jumper to Cable sellect.
SATA drive don't have jumpers to set.
Turn off and disconnect the computer. Make sure that the LED inside the case is OFF.
Open the LEFT side pannel. If you don't have a tool-less mount, you may need to remove both pannels.
The drive(s) are to the top and front of the case.
Standard mount:
Slide in the new drive in and secure it in place with some screws. There is place for 4 screws, 2 on both sides, but you can easily use only 1 or 2.
Connect it.
Tool-less mount:
Slide the new drive in place and snap in the retaining clip.
Connect it.
You need to connect a power connector and the data cable.
Reconnect the power and boot the computer.
Enter the BIOS settings to have it recognised from the Advance tab. Save the BIOS settings and reboot.
Once the OS is up and running, you need to format the drive. For Windows, use the NTFS format. Normaly, the default cluster size is correct (default to 4K).
If the drive is destined to contain video or other very large files, you may find it usefull to have larger clusters like 8K, 16K or 32K clusters. It may improve performances.
You can now copy your data to the new drive.
If you realy want to, you can now remove the old drive:
Power OFF and disconnect the computer.
Disconnect the old drive and slide it out.
Unless the old drive is deffective, you don't need to remove it, you can easily have several hard drives in your computer.
Put back the side pannels.
It's normaly beter to reinstall the OS if you want it to run from the new drive.
In this case, it's beter to disconnect the old drive, install the OS on the new drive, reconnect the old drive then copy your data to the new drive.
You can move the various "My..." folders this way:
Open Windows explorer.
Right-click the My... folder you want to relocate.
Drag it to the new drive and release the mouse button.
Sellect "Move here" and wait for the move to complete.
This operation can take quite some time as you may need to move several Gb of data contained in 1000's of files...
Those folders DON'T need to reside on the same drive!
The OS on a drive, My videos on the second drive, My music on the third, and My documents and My images on the fourth drive is a perfectly valid setup.
Electro, November 2011
