if the old drive is still working you could consider to clone old drive. How
it work
-hook the new drive on the available IDE port (check the HD japers)
-clone the old drive to new one.
-set the new as a C drive.
This will save you at list 5 hours of work.

Boba Vancouver BC

"kony" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 14 Dec 2004 08:30:57 -0000, "TheScullster"
phil-at-dropthespam.com wrote:

Hi All

The machine I am hoping to "aquire" is a poorly PIII 1 GHz from Planet PC.
It has the following components:

IBM Deskstar 30.7Gb HDs (2 of them) Model DTLA-307030


Pinnacle Systems DV500 Card V4.0 - I believe this is a video capture card,
but have yet to investigate this.


Matrox Graphics Card G45 + MDHA32DB .. 975-0201 Rev A

DVD Rom Drive

CUV4X-E Rev 1.05 Motherboard


The questions:

I have googled for info on replacing a hard drive but have only found an
install of a second drive.
I want to fit a new drive in place of the primary boot drive (which is
clunking not booting) rather than use the existing second drive as there
may
be some useful info on the second good unit.

Can anyone direct me to an appropriate site which gives a step by step
guide
please?
Any other useful pointers specific to the hardware above?


Step by step guide to doing what exactly?

All you have to do to replace the drive is to unplug/unscrew
it, jumper new drive same as it was jumpered, then reverse
the prodedure, plug and screw it in. Many retail packaged
drives include basic instrucitons.

A couple other items to consider:
1) BIOS should be set to "auto" for that drive channel. It
probably is already.

2) If the motherboard won't recognize drives over 128GB
capacity, there are several alternatives ranging from adding
a PCI IDE controller card (ATA133 preferred), downloading
the current bios from Asus and flashing the motherboard, or
using Drive Overlay software included with drive or
downloadable from manufacturer's website. The DO software
is the worst option, best to flash the bios IF it's needed.
If the drive shows up as full capacity there is no need to
do anything else.

3) Moden drives use an 80-conductor cable. The old cable
might be 80 conductor but if it isn't, use the new cable
that comes with a retail packaged drive. Visual comparison
or a bios "no 80 conductor cable..." message can be used to
determine this.

So, you have the drive physically attached and supported
from above steps, then we get to the point where the first
question, "what exactly" comes into play. At that point you
proceed with the setup per your choice of operating system.
With newer OS you can just boot to the OS CD and proceed
from there. With old OS you might want to boot a boot
floppy meant for that OS to format and partition the drive.