Hard Drive Help

Posted: Wed Oct 11, 2006 2:28 pm

Having just checked how much space I have left on my poor mans 60g harddrive I was shocked to see only 1.88g left.

Soon I will have to install BF2142 im sure it will take more space than that.

So what are my best options.

1. Uninstall all the old game I no longer play (ie Neverwinter nights and all its extentions) and hope that gives enough space free.

2. Upgrade, buy another HD, whats the star difficulty (out of 5 say lol - haynes style) on fitting a addition HD. and any tips on what to get Ect

Out of interest would having so little space affect my PC in any way as it does seem slower at times.

Cheers

Posted: Wed Oct 11, 2006 3:09 pm

OMG Drew!

HDD start to show signs of lagging after 50% in my opinion, but towards 80%+ they will definately slow down. Sounds like you need a good sorting out there mate. Im assuming that you have a lot of documents, pictures, music etc taking up all that space?

The right thing to do would be to get a new hard disk, like 250GB partition that so that it had 50GB just for your programs, games and windows, and leave the rest for your documents music etc. That is fairly easy to do, however im assuming that you can install windows and have all the discs for all the things that you want to have on your computer?

To add a disc is easy, just buy one, make sure that it is compatible, depending on the age of your machine and by the sounds of it you may need just a regular EIDE drive. I would buy a Hitachi one, because i always recommend them. Then the cable that your drive is on now will have another socket. You need to set the jumpers on your new drive to slave, and then attach the drive to the spare socket on the EIDE lead, and plug a molex power cable in. Hey presto!

Then just switch on and you are away, just format the drive and move loadsa stuff onto it.

My system disk only takes about 30GB up with games and apps so you should be ok with the 60GB one just for that. You can set your My Documents to be on this drive id you hava lot of music and pictures here.

But i stress a 60GB drive that is 98% full will be very fragmented, and under performing!

Replacing hard disks is a 1 star job, a trained monkey could do it, nothing to worry about there. But if you reformat, which is the sensible option it can take a bit of time to do, at least 1 hour i would say.

Good luck drew, ill speak to you later about it if you like

LT!

Posted: Wed Oct 11, 2006 3:43 pm

Nice On LT

Didnt think till I saw Dicksters thred about game with 13g install I have a look at mine. Shocked

Most stuff on my PC is without disk. Crying or Very sad

+ I got a dodgy copy of windows apparantly. Wink

So could I just buy a new HD for my games only? fit that and move all games to that one??

leaving the old on as it is less the games.

Joined: Apr 24, 2006 Posts: 525 Location: Manchester UK

Hi mate,

Installing a spare HDD is pretty simple and no you dont need to re-install windows. Just go for it, you will be fine Very Happy

for £50 you can buy a 250GB hard drive. Does your motherboard support SATA drives? (Check the mobo website for specs). If so, buy a SATA drive and SATA drive cable and just hook it up to a spare slot.

If not, buy an IDE drive, ATA100 or ATA133 (not SATA, SATA2, SCSI), as they are compatible with alllll motherboards eeeeevver *booming voice*

Slot it in the case and connect to it a power cable (there should be several spares hanging off your power supply, if not, you can buy a splitter which creates new power cables off existing ones for again aboutr a quid)

Connect the HDD to your motherboard. For SATA this is easy. For IDE, the IDE cables are usually wide (about 40 wires) like a ribbon. They have three connecters on them. If you have a spare IDE slot on your motherboard (one will be blue, the other black - they are connected usually to hard drives and CDROMS), then just plug your HDD into the spare one. If you dont have a spare one, you can make your HDD a slave (lol) on an existing cable - worry about that bridge when you come to it though mate.

Fire up your computer. The spare drive can be formatted, partitioned (I recommend making two partitions like LT said, one 50GB, one 200GB - partition magic can do this for you) and you can move all your data across to the 200G partition.

You cannot move games and installed programs. Unfortunately, when you install a game it registers itself with Windows, so moving it causes all kinds of problems. However, you can uninstall a game on C drive and reinstall it on your extra drive. If you move all your music / media files though that should be enough to free up extra space. Once done, defragment all your drives. Theyre gonna be pretty fragmented!!!!

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Having said all that above, it is advisable to reinstall windows - WinXP gets really really laggy after a few months of continuous use. It gets full of spywares, trogans and files that are used by Windows are never put back where they should be :S

I'd advise getting yourself a copy of Windows XP and when the time is right, do a clean install. If when you install windows, you create several partitions on your disk, ie:

C: System (Windows and programs)
D: MyStuff (eg music, media, work)

then by keeping all your work in D and anything you dont want to lose, if Windows does ever go belly up, you can reinstall to C without affecting any of your important files.

It may seem like hassle, but in the long run, its worth it! For now, just buy an HDD and slot it in there (do create two partitions though) and copy over all your data to free up some space Very Happy

Joined: Oct 04, 2005 Posts: 193 Location: Leeds, UK

An extra hard disk is the way to go you might struggle moving your game folders over though, windows generally doesn't like you moving installations around. The best thing to do would be get an extra hard disk and just move your documents/ music/ pics/ videos over to the new disk. then have a good clean up on your c: drive.

Generally i don't believe having a full disk slows it down too much as long as you keep it defragmented and make sure the paging file in particular is in one piece. Windows defrag isn't a brilliant tool so you should get a hold of something like diskeeper or O&O defrag. These allow you to do a boot time defrag which will sort all your files out before windows locks em all down (Add me to msn if you want one of these).

So yeah the first step is to open the side of your case and find out what kind of hard disk you can install. If you have a flat wide cable (about 1.5mm x60mm) then you will want an IDE disk and if you have a small cable (about 1.5mmx10mm) then you will need a SATA/SATA2 cable. Post your findings and someone will help you pick one out. Very Happy

Posted: Wed Oct 11, 2006 4:24 pm

Yeah moving games folders is not really good, any applications should really be on your c: drive. Although if you were to uninstall them all and re-install them on the new drive (supposing you have legit games) that might work, i have never done it that way but it might be an option.

I think the first step is to pop into scan and get a HDD, there must be a decent amount of docs that are taking up all that room, unless you have like 15 games on there or summat!

Defragging your disk is an essential part of keeping your computer stable, it really really helps, so yeah if you can get hold of diskeeper one way or another that would be good. It tends to sort a lot of probs out!

LT!

Posted: Wed Oct 11, 2006 4:28 pm

Cheers Guys - Much Appreciated

Just at work so hard to digest all that Info.

Also I have a dodgy copy of windows and I have lost the disk. LOL I refuse to pay £93.00 for a new copy. will tis still be ok buying a new HDD, presuming windows will have to be left on C with my games and move all the other stuff over to the nrew HDD.

when connecting a HDD does the PC have to be off??

Mobord - is a MSI 6712, can anyone tell me a good HDD to fit this board.

Cheers

Posted: Wed Oct 11, 2006 4:52 pm

I think Its not sata quick look finds

Storage Controller Type(s) DMA/ATA-133 (Ultra) x 2 .

so presumin i can connect 2 ASA-133.

Posted: Wed Oct 11, 2006 5:16 pm

ALso - lol

Could I get away with just uninstalling a load of crap I dont use to free space and do a defrag with one of dicksters recomendations. instead of buying a new HDD as a temporary measure (at least till after christmas)

Posted: Thu Oct 12, 2006 9:29 am

yeah uninstalling a load of stuff is a good idea, by the sound of it you need a regular EIDE 133 drive then. You will need to majorly defrag your disk though still. You should switch your computer off to installl the HDD when you get one! And yeah, you can keep windows on drive c: and your games then put your other stuff on the new drive!

Hope this helps drew!

LT!

Joined: Oct 04, 2005 Posts: 357 Location: Kent

drewcat wrote:

Cheers Guys - Much Appreciated

when connecting a HDD does the PC have to be off??

Cheers

I was gonna stay out of this but this question sort of scared me - Drew, absolutely yes!!!!

there is another way which is REALLY simple - you could get a USB2 external harddrive which will just sit on your desk and flash a bit - you just plug it in (doesnt matter if PC is on/off) and it should configure itself pretty much.. you can then move all you docs/pics/special interest videos onto that.

the only downside is they're quite slow so you would still keep games on the c drive but at least you wouldnt need to touch Win XP or open your PC

Posted: Thu Oct 12, 2006 9:42 am

ElGordo wrote:

I was gonna stay out of this but this question sort of scared me - Drew, absolutely yes!!!!

LOL - was thinking of being talked through installation on TS. Laughing

and its only a few wires.

Well i managed to delete 20gig worth of rubbish so now only 60% Full HDD. Very Happy

Did a few cleaners, registary scan Ect.

and NICE ONE Dickster Wink

took 6 hours like but seems it was well worth it.

Again Cheer Guys.

Posted: Thu Oct 12, 2006 9:43 am

ElGordo wrote:

I was gonna stay out of this but this question sort of scared me - Drew, absolutely yes!!!!

LOL - was thinking of being talked through installation on TS. Laughing

Well i managed to delete 20gig worth of rubbish so now only 60% Full HDD. Very Happy

Did a few cleaners, registary scan Ect.

and NICE ONE Dickster Wink

took 6 hours like but seems it was well worth it.

Again Cheer Guys.

Joined: Oct 04, 2005 Posts: 193 Location: Leeds, UK

that is a very very good point el gordo. i use an Icy Box which is a hard drive enclosure so you can put any size disk you want into it you can of course buy a one that is complete but i like the idea of being able to upgrade/swap the disk inside. this connects via a usb2 connection and to be honest i dont notice any slow down at all. although i only use it for my downloads and for keeping ISO's on so its not under any real stress. so yeah if your not too keen on touching the inside then do that.

Joined: Oct 04, 2005 Posts: 357 Location: Kent

maybe not too much slower once its going but they can take a while to "wind up" which would slow you down getting in game