If all you are talking about is transfering your important files then first install the 120gig with a fresh install of yor operating system ,then piggy back your old 40 as slave, make a folder on your new drive and use explorer to copy over the important data.
Once you have all your important files transfered then just format the old drive so you could, if wanted, have the old drive as additional storage.
Yes, just make sure your motherboard supports the 120.
Martin
Replying helps further our knowledge, without comment leaves us wondering.
Providing your system BIOS can handle the larger drive, connect the new Maxtor 120 as a slave drive. 8 meg buffer helps quite a bit on its own. EIDE controller must support ATA133 to get full advantage of faster data transfer.
Using Maxblast 3, which should be on the CD that came with the new drive, copy the old drive to the new drive. It'll ask about the operating system and if you want the new drive to be the bootable drive.
Power PC off, reverse the master/slave settings (or cabling if set as 'cable select'), and boot. New drive should boot and get you going with the old drive as a slave drive which can now be used for storing data or whatever.
Can also be done if drives are each a primary on separate controllers. Just make sure new drive is Disk0.
I guess I should have checked that before I purchased a bigger HD. How do I know if my Bios supports the larger drives, I'm not sure what version bios is on my MB but I do know I have a P4B motherboard and a P4 1.5 Ghz processor with 768 MBs of SDRAM... I can check the bios version when I get home but does it sound like it'll be ok?
Max blast 3? I didn't get a CD with my drive ( it's a OEM drive..) any idea where I can d/l max blast?
If jumpers are set correct, and your bios recognizes the new HD, then you're all set to continue.
If it doesn't then go look for a BIOS upgrade for your motherboard. However, a P4B motherboard should support large HDs, so there should be no problem there.
Jumper settings:
As suggested, setup the new HD as master on first IDE channel and change ye olde one to be slave. Then partition and install a fresh system on the new HD.
When you have a fresh and working system installed, I recommend that you use Norton Ghost (or another DriveImage application) to take a snapshot of your system drive -doing that, it should take you less than 10 minutes to restore your system.
Your mobo supports upto UDMA 100 but your drive can handle
UDMA 133. But don't worry about that. You won't notice the speed difference. It's miliseconds were talking about.
The 8mb cache makes the drive write it's data faster to the disk so that's good.
If you want a complete image of your old drive on the new one you can use Norton Ghost or Drive Quest Magic. But be warned. It is not 100% guranteed it will make a exact copy which will work. That's because its a different drive your making the image of. Sometimes it's better to start all over again but it's worth the try.
Maxblast has various options - you can partition drive with it I think - but it will also just clone old to new (so you'll have a 120GB partition which should act like 40 - except with extra 80GB space).
If your bios supports 40GB, I'd lay odds its supports 120. There is a limitation of 64GB on some bioses (but its not very common) - next common one up from 32GB is 128GB (or 137GB, depending how you define a gigabyte - 137 in drive manufacturer speak) - which your 120GB drive is within - so should be ok. If you look on motherboard manufacturer's site, it may tel you.
Ok I used Maxblast 3 to copy my old hard drive to my new one... it seemed like it worked ok, but when I go to remove my old hd completely my cpu tends to freeze at a windows XP screen and that's it... it doesn't fully boot up unless I hook my old HD as a slave on my system...
After doing the copy, did you remove old drive completely and make new one master & then tried booting? If you booted with old drive in machine, that would still be C: - so new drive will be on E: or F: or.... If this is what's happened - do the copy again & remove old drive before booting new (as master). Might be worth making new drive master and old slave before doing the copy too.
yah after the copy I changed the jumper settings and rebooted the machine... but with the old drive still connected so the old drive did remain as C: and E: and F: was created... do I have to do the whole copy process again.. it took quite sometime... or do you think I should just do a clean instaall but keep the old harddrive after the OS is installed to transfer files to?
What OS do you think I should install? WIN XP Professional or XP media center....?????
Wisegi - even if your 40GB drive is nearly full, copy shouldn't take too long (especially if drives on separate IDE controllers). A clean install should take longer - but is obviously a viable option. As to XP Pro or media centre - also down to you & your use (I've no experience of media centre & no idea what your usage of machine is).
TIP!
There is a utility in XP called "files and settings transfer wizard" .
Could alse be used when swapping HDD's .
It's worth checking out .
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