What are the Steps for installing hard drive?

Answer 1

One option.

Insert Windows Install disc and boot to CD/DVD drive.

Follow on screen prompts. When asked, choose to format the desired drive.

Beware: All data will be erased.

Answer 2

Before you buy your replacement SSD, you'll need to figure out if your laptop uses a drive with a SATA (Serial ATA) or PATA (Parallel ATA) interface. While a general rule of thumb is that 2006 marks the year when PATA was replaced by SATA. It's easier, and less embarrassing, if you check the specifications for your portable before you buy the SSD.

Vista-powered portables should not be problematic, especially if you've kept it up to date. XP, on the other hand, may present a problem. Vista will roll-in the drivers it needs for the SSD and tell you to reboot. XP may not, Check with the SSD manufacturer to determine compatibility before you buy. (To be honest, I've only tested these SSD drives with Vista.)

Also make sure that your portable actually uses a 2.5-inch drive. Most do, some don't. Lenovo's X300 Thinkpad series, for example, doesn't and if you're upgrading the SSD shipped with it, a 2.5-inch replacement won't fit. The Samsung drive in the Lenovo is smaller.

If you're replacing your boot drive, you might want to clone the existing hard disk onto your SSD before you do anything else. It will spare you the task of needing to re-install drivers and, in most cases, you can create a proportional partition on the SSD should your old drive and the new solid state drive differ in capacity.

We've done this successfully many times with Apricorn's DriveWire. It includes instructions and all the needed cloning software. If you intend to use the hard drive you're replacing as an external disk when you're done, consider instead Apricorn's Universal Hard Drive Upgrade Kit. Ditto on the instructions and software. As well, the enclosure doubles as the new home for your old drive.

When your drive is ready to install, power down your computer and unplug it. Turn the laptop upside down and remove the battery. This will assure that all power is off to the motherboard and the components connected to it. The problem with this approach, unfortunately, is that you've now left your computer ungrounded.

If you're sitting in a cloth chair with your comfy Mocs rubbing on a nice rug, you could be a source of deadly lightening bolts that we typically call static electricity. Either ground yourself by touching something metal (not connected to or touching the portable) each time before you touch it or stop by your local electronics store and pick up a grounding wrist strap. (Follow the directions on how to use the wrist strap.)

Portables of recent (two or so years) vintage will have a cover plate on the bottom or an edge plate along one side that needs to be removed so you can access the drive. Older laptops might require that their entire bottom panel be removed. Put any screws off to side and note where each has been removed should they be of differing lengths

Answer 3

Primary boot hard diskIf you are replacing the primary boot disk (and the OS with it) this may be very easy.

Windows 2000/ME/XP/Vista:

Once the new hard disk is installed, simply boot from the windows CD. The installation process will walk you through will be partitioning and formatting the hard disk as part of the install routine

Windows 98/98:

The process is a little more tricky as windows 98 CDs arent bootable, and most systems old enough to have come with windows 98 or below couldn't boot from CD anyway. You will need a windows boot floppy disk to boot to DOS where you can use the Fdisk and format commands to do the job.

Additionally, nearly all modern Linux variants have an automated partitioning and formatting dialog as part of the standard install routine accessed by booting from the CD. Macintosh users, put in the OS CD and hold Shift whilst powering the system on.

Secondary or external hard diskOk so you bought a new hard disk & plugged it in and nothing happened.

Windows 2000/XP/Vista

Windows XP and Vista *should* just pop up a dialog when it sees an unpartitioned or unformatted disk has been added & ask the user if they want to partition or format it.

In the control panel> administrative tools > Computer management. In the left frame look for "disk management" (you may have to expand the "storage" category in the left frame). Disk management gives you a list of all your hard disks (partitioned or not) and in the lower right section you can right-click on any unallocated space & choose to partition & format it.

Note: always use quick-format, regular format can take hours and hours & makes no noticable difference.

Note: be very careful when using the disk management utility. One of the disks in that list has your OS on it, one or two wrong clicks here can wipe the wrong disk & there goes everything. Make sure you are formatting what you think you're formatting and triple-check everything before you hit ok.

Windows 95/98/ME

Open up a DOS window (click start> run> type in "command") and type in "fdisk" (without the quotes of course)

Fdisk has a pretty straight-forward interface, use it to select your new hard disk, and partition it however is needed.

Note: be very careful when using fdisk. One of the disks in that list has your OS on it. Make sure youre partitioning the right disk or youll lose everything.

Partition magic

Most of the time when dealing with partitions and formatting all data on the hard disk is lost. There is an application available called Partition Magic which has the capability to alter partitions (resize, split, merge & the like) without losing the data. It is not free, but it is a very useful utility.