Anyone good with computer hardware?

[RONDAL]

Have a HTPC with 2 internal hard drives. The one used for booting the OS shat the bed and i've gotta replace it. I've got a new 2TB drive to put in there, only problem is i dont know WHICH drive exactly i've gotta remove.

Anyone any good with this kind of stuff and can gimme a hand?
I have beeeeeeeer.

[onceover]

Re: Anyone good with computer hardware?

Is the OS drive a different size? It says the capacity on the drive, otherwise, remove both, install new one, install OS, then try each drive to see which one it is?

[darkmanCANADA]

Re: Anyone good with computer hardware?

Trace the flat SATA cable from one of the drives to the motherboard. Usually the bootup drive will be connected to SATA0 and then the DVD drive to SATA1 and your second hard drive to SATA2.

[RONDAL]

Re: Anyone good with computer hardware?

i would just do your suggestion pat, but i have media on the non-corrupted drive i'd love to not have to go looking for again.
darkman; is that a guaranteed way to check or just a rule of thumb?

[RONDAL]

Re: Anyone good with computer hardware?

both drives are identical sizing, otherwise it would be easy toc heck.

[onceover]

Re: Anyone good with computer hardware?

i would just do your suggestion pat, but i have media on the non-corrupted drive i'd love to not have to go looking for again.
darkman; is that a guaranteed way to check or just a rule of thumb?

Not sure I understand. With both drives unplugged while you install the OS on the new drive you bought, you don't risk losing any data. Once everything is up and running, plug the old drives in one at a time, and check which one it is you want to keep

[RONDAL]

Re: Anyone good with computer hardware?

oh ok i see what you mean. sorry pat i misunderstood your initial post.

[sabbySC]

Re: Anyone good with computer hardware?

Enter the bios on startup, determine which drive is the primary boot drive, take note of which is slave and which is master (likely the master will be the boot drive). Than open computer and replace accordingly. You can determine which is the master by the jumper configuration.

Alternately do the same but note the manufacturer and/or size of drive and replace as per whichever one makes sense.

edit - this would be for older drives, the aformentioned methods will work anyway.

[Tuna]

Re: Anyone good with computer hardware?

Not sure I understand. With both drives unplugged while you install the OS on the new drive you bought, you don't risk losing any data. Once everything is up and running, plug the old drives in one at a time, and check which one it is you want to keep

Exactly, In fact, if you have the space install operating system on your new drive and just power up all 3, if you're using windows 7 it will even see the old operating system and can boot into it.

[RONDAL]

Re: Anyone good with computer hardware?

i ruv you guys wrong time

[Kor]

Re: Anyone good with computer hardware?

Unplug one at random.

If it boots to windows, you unplugged the wrong one.

?

[onceover]

Re: Anyone good with computer hardware?

From what I understood in the first post, the OS drive is dead, thus that wouldn't work?

[darkmanCANADA]

Re: Anyone good with computer hardware?

i would just do your suggestion pat, but i have media on the non-corrupted drive i'd love to not have to go looking for again.
darkman; is that a guaranteed way to check or just a rule of thumb?

Generally SATA0 is the boot drive. Check your bios settings as to which SATA connection is the bootup and look on the motherboard. You may have to pull out a magnifying glass as the printing is really tiny. BTW my Dell PC has a blue cable for the bootup drive and the DVD and second drive have black cables.

[RONDAL]

Re: Anyone good with computer hardware?

so i swapped one of the drives out (SATA1) over SATA2
booted it up on windows7 CD and the install went fine. got to the desktop and everything.

then i shut it down, put the case back together properly and go to boot up, wouldn't work.
had to reboot from the CDROM drive, says it found some critical error in the windows recovery screen. right now running a memory hardware check to ensure thats ok.
otherwise i don't really know what to do?
it sees both drives fine, I've tried swathing the boot order of the drives and it seems to make no difference.

I'm getting a CMOS error at the bios startup???