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Upgrading hard drive questions

2K views 24 replies 2 participants last post by  spunk.funk 
#1 ·
I need to get some information before attempting a hard drive upgrade. Thanks in advance for any help!

Situation is:

I have an old HP Mediavision m7360y running XP service pack 3. Not my primary PC, but I need to keep it operational due to critical software that won't run on newer O.S. Current hard drive has started making a clicking noise on cold reboot (like playing card on bicycle spokes). I think it's time to upgrade to larger drive before this one crashes (plus more space would be nice). I'd like to make the new drive the boot drive and keep the current one as a secondary for as long as it lasts, if possible.

Not a PC repair expert, but I am comfortable opening, upgrading RAM, etc.

Before I order a drive, I want to make sure I've correctly determined what I need.

Current hard drive is: Samsung HD160JJ/P (160GB 7200 rpm SATA 3Gb/s & NCQ Hard Drive)

Motherboard is P5LP-LE.

CPU is Intel Pentium D

I've looked at the motherboard and there are 3 empty SATA connections, so I think I can add another SATA drive. Is this correct?

I only have one SATA cable, so I must need to order a second?

There appear to be several available electrical connections that look like the one connected to the current drive. They say "Foxconn P12", "Foxconn P9", etc. Is one of these what I would use for power?

I don't have OS installation disks, but I have cloned the current drive to an external Western Digital MyBook USB drive using Easus ToDo Backup Free (I hope. First time I've ever done this.) But, I think--unless it dies before I get a new one--I should be able to clone it again to the new drive and then switch the connections to the motherboard.

Not sure where to mount an additional drive. Current drive is mounted outside the cage for the HP Personal Media Drive. There is an empty space under the DVD drive. Maybe it could go there? I guess I would need mounting hardware?

So my questions are:

Am I on the right track?
What else do I need to know before I purchase a drive?
Is there a HD size limitation in XP? (I'm hoping to get at least 1TB if not 2)

I'm a novice at this, so please don't assume I know whatever should be obvious. I am grateful for as many specifics as possible--and happy to be directed to other resources, as well.

Thank you!
Elaine
 
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#2 ·
We can answer your questions. First off, a clicking HDD is the sound of a HDD that is about to fail at any moment, so make sure you have a current backup.
You can put up to a 2TB HDD into your computer without any problems. Any SATA power plug from your Power Supply Unit can be plugged into your new SATA drive. You should place your new SATA cable into the same port on the motherboard as your old C: drive. If you have a clone image of your C: drive, once you get the new drive attached you can re-image it with your Clone to the new Drive and you should be back in business.
Once you are fully restored and the computer boots normally, get rid of the clicking drive as it will fail at any time.
 
#3 ·
Thank you. I do have a current backup of all data in Carbonite and on my laptop-- plus the clone on the external drive, which I devoutly hope has the OS and program files.

If I plug new drive into same port as old C drive and it hasn't yet been re-imaged, how will the PC boot up? Can it boot from the image on the external USB drive?
 
#4 ·
What software did you use to create your Clone? Most Clone software has an option to create a boot CD. You would boot off of the CD with the external HDD connected. Whether you chose to do an Image Clone or a standard clone, in the software of the Cloned boot CD, you choose to restore your cloned image from the External USB HDD (source) to the blank new HDD (Target, or Destination)
 
#5 ·
I used EaseUS Todo Backup Free--and it does appear to have an option for an Emergency disk -- either Linux or WinPE. Which raises another question because I'm afraid to boot up the PC from the failing hard drive, if I can avoid it. Can I make this emergency disk on my laptop (which is running Win 8.1) for use on the desktop where I want to restore XP? My guess is yes, because all I'm trying to do is get it started enough to restore the clone to the new hard drive--but please let me know if I've guessed wrong.

Second question -- For new HD, I'm looking at Seagate Barracuda ST2000DM001 2TB 7200 rpm 64Mb Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive. Any reason I shouldn't get this?
 
#6 ·
There are no reason you shouldn't get the Seagate HDD
Yes, you can create an Emergency Boot disc with Easeus. the OS that the disc is created in is not important, since you are restoring an Easeus Clone, whatever the OS is.
 
#8 ·
New hard drive arrived today. But I am having no luck in getting to a point where I can restore the clone I made.

For some reason, the PC will not boot from the emergency boot DVD I made using Easeus ToDo Backup.

If I replug the original hard drive into its original SATA slot, the PC boots up normally (and the drive doesn't click anymore!). But when I disconnect it and plug the new drive into that same SATA slot and put the emergency boot disc in the dvd drive, the computer hangs on the HP splash screen.

I tried powering off and reconnecting the original drive in original slot and new drive in another SATA slot (as described in http://www.pcworld.com/article/2086644/how-to-upgrade-to-a-larger-hard-drive.html)--and I get a totally blank screen.

I am baffled. Do I need to check something in the BIOS? I note that SATA Mode is listed as "RAID." Could that have anything to do with it?

Going to try making the boot disc on a CD instead of a DVD while waiting for any suggestions here. Thanks!
 
#9 ·
Never mind! I think it may be working. I was able to get it to boot once I made the emergency disk a CD instead of a DVD. I think I am restoring the clone now. I will report on success or failure.

But...since the original drive is no longer making strange noises...how would I go about re-connecting it so that both drives are visible? (I know it's probably not reliable -- but it could be useful for temporary files, I'd think, if I could get the machine to boot with both drives connected.)
 
#10 ·
Once you get the new Seagate drive to boot Windows, then shut down the computer and attach your old HDD as a secondary HDD using a power plug from the PSU and another SATA data cable. When you boot the computer, it should show both drives in My Computer. Depending on the manufacturer of the Old HDD, you would run the Manufacturers Diagnostic Software to test the HDD (eg) Seatools for Seagate drives and DataLifeGuard for WD drives.
 
#11 ·
Some progress! But not complete success.

New HD booted up fine. OS, data and recovery partition seem intact. So, yay!

Upon connecting old drive in an open SATA slot and rebooting, I got an alert box headed "Windows - No Disk" and the following message:

Exception processing message C0000013 Parameters 75b6bf7c 4 75bbbf7c 75b6bf7c

With options to "Cancel," "Try Again," or "Continue."

"Try Again" did nothing. Alert box remained.

"Continue" continued the boot process and Windows "Found New Hardware" and I could view both old and new drives. At that point, it looked like success.

BUT, I thought I should try to reboot and make sure. PC hung on Shutdown, and I had to hold the power button to complete the shutdown. Which, btw, is also not working properly. PC will shut down but as soon as the power button is released, it comes back on. This did not happen previously. Now I'm having to hold down the button and unplug, with button still held, as soon as everything fully shuts down.

Then, on reboot, a totally blank screen.

I shut it down again, disconnected the original HD , and again it booted up with same No Disk error message -- but new drive is there and all seems fine, once I hit Continue.

I guess I could do without the original HD -- but I'd like to solve the problem, if possible -- or at least understand it.

Suggestions appreciated.
 
#12 ·
Boot into Setup (Bios) Make sure the SATA port that the Old HDD is in, is enabled, but is not in the Hard Drive Boot order or is after the new HDD in the Hard Drive boot order, this is separate from Boot Priority. Then Set the Bios to Optimal Settings or Default. Save and Exit. This should boot into Windows without any input. If the computer fails to boot with the old HDD, it is failing and needs to be replaced.
 
#13 ·
Thanks so much for patiently trying to help!

I have looked at the BIOS, and I am not sure I have settings corresponding to your suggestions. So, I'm not sure how to tell if the SATA port is enabled.

Without the old HD connected, the MAIN screen shows:

First Channel Device 0 [ST2000M001-1E]
First Channel Device 1 [None]
Second Channel Device 0 [None]
Second Channel Device 1 [None]
Third Channel Device 0 [HL-DT-STDVDRRW]
Third Channel Device 1 [None]

ADVANCED screen has only two lines that appear relevant to SATA:

Onboard PATA/SATA Adapters [Both]
SATA Mode [Raid]

BOOT screen shows this:

Boot Device Priority

1st Boot Device [Floppy Group]
2nd Boot Device [CD-Rom Group]
3rd Boot Device [HDD Group]
4th Boot Device [Network Boot Group]

Floppy Group Boot Priority [Not Installed]
CD-ROM Group Boot Priority [HL-DT-STDVDRR]
(Subscreen says: 3rd Master: HL-DT-STDVDRRW GSA-H20L)
HDD Group Boot Priority [ST2000DM001-1]
(Subscreen says:
1. Raid-0: STD2000DM001-1ER164
2. USB-HDD0: ST3160023A 8.11
Network Boot Group Not Installed

-------

Under HDD Group Boot Priority, that #2 may be an issue. I googled ST3160023A, and come up with a Seagate drive -- but the original hard drive is a Samsung, and the USB drive to which I burnt the clone is a Western Digital external drive. I'd have thought it would have had a WD hard drive in it. (Also, the external drive was not attached when I booted into the BIOS, so ???)

Finally, when you say "Then Set the Bios to Optimal Settings or Default. Save and Exit," I am looking at "F5: Setup Defaults," and wondering if that is what you mean or if it would wipe out all settings back to some original factory configuration.

So, I haven't attempted any BIOS changes yet. Other than that USB drive and me not hitting the F5 for Setup Defaults, everything else looks like it conforms to your suggestions. But maybe I am missing something or misunderstanding?
 
#14 ·
Maybe I spoke too soon again.

Plugged old HD into a different SATA port, and PC has booted up twice in a row and recognized both old and new drives. Still getting that message about No Disk and exception processing, though.

Will wait for confirmation that I should try F5: Setup Defaults.

Also -- 2 separate questions -- when I burnt the clone to the USB drive, I didn't notice that the Easus software allows reconfiguration of the partition -- so as a result, the USB drive went from 500Gb to 160. I'm assuming -- once I'm sure everything is working right, I could create a new clone on that drive and regain the full space. Because when I copied the clone to the new drive, I was able to specify a larger partition and retain the space. Most of it anyway. New 2Gb drive is showing a partition of 1.80Tb and a recovery partition of 9.46. I'm assuming that's okay because you never get the full advertised space -- but please tell me if I'm wrong.
 
#15 · (Edited)
OK, on the main screen in the Bios, the ST drive is the new Seagate HDD. The HL-DT drive is your optical CD/DVDRW drive.
If you haven't made any changes yourself to the Bios, setting to Defaults will not make anything different but it should remove that message when booting.
Since your USB drive was the Source drive for the clone and not the Destination or Target drive, Easeus should not have changed the capacity of the USB drive. The Seagate drive should still be the full capacity of the drive, but Easeus may have only created an exact mirror of the source drive partition and partitioned the Seagate drive to a smaller partition and have the Seagate drive may have Unallocated Space to the right of the drive.
With all of the drives plugged in, Boot into Windows go to Start/Run and type diskmgmt.msc and press enter. In the Disk Management window you can see the capacity of all of your drives in the lower half of this window. If you need help, please attach a screenshot of Disk Management with all drives showing.
 
#16 ·
I am making progress--slowly--but it's progress!

1) Hitting F5 to Setup Defaults did not stop the No Disk exception processing message. However, I found this:

How to fix No Disk Exception Processing Message c0000013 Parameters 75Tech Support All


This instructs how to use regedit to set HHKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, SYSTEM,CurrentControlSet, Control, Windows, ErrorMode to 2 -- and that seems to have done the trick.


2) diskmgmt.msc shows that I have unallocated space on the new drive and on the USB drive.


I have attached two screenshots.


I realize the unallocated space on the USB drive is because it was the original destination for the clone of the smaller Samsung drive -- and I did not notice that Easus would have let me resize the partition as I was making the clone.


I did notice by the time I was using the USB as the source to set up the new Seagate drive -- but the slider in the Easus software is somewhat imprecise and a little hard to read. Apparently, I didn't get it set correctly.

What are my options for recovering this space on both these drives? I'm guessing I could repeat the clone process and try to set the partitions correctly -- but maybe there is an easier way?
 

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#17 ·
You have a bit of a mess.
If you have Unallocated Space, you can Extend a drive that is to the left of the space into this space to recover this space. However, you cannot extend a drive to the right into Unallocated Space on the left. Easeus does allow this but if it's your C: drive it may mess up the boot. Also the Recovery Partition should not be extended or touched. So, you shouldn't extend it into the Unallocated Space.
So, I suggest starting from the beginning.
Remove all drives, except the original HDD you want to clone and the drive you are cloning to (eg) the Seagate drive. Be sure to Clone the Whole Disk and all of it's partitions, not just the C: partition this should include your recovery partition if you need to restore your computer.
In the future convert your FAT32 drives to NTFS for ease of use.
 
#19 ·
Now I've got more of a mess--and I better stop guessing and wait for more info.

The good news is I am still able to connect original drive as sole drive and it still works.

Here's what happened: After re-cloning the original drive onto the new drive, I disconnected original and tried booting from new. PC would boot up but not allow me to log into Windows. If I connect both drives, I can log in.

Research suggests that it may be because the new drive, at that point, already had partitions from the first attempt--and I should have deleted them before I re-cloned.

I was going to try to use Disk Management to delete the partitions from the new drive and re-clone the original once again -- but I don't seem to be able to do that--or much of anything else. With both drives connected, PC boots very slowly. Disk Management hangs without displaying any drives. Shutdown hangs as well, and power button must be held. An additional symptom: If I start Task Manager, two copies of it open.

The only possibility that occurs to me is that I might be able to boot from original drive, download and install Easus Partition Master, reconnect new drive and maybe get Partition Master to run. I doubt that will work because of the speed and hanging issues, and if it doesn't, I'd have to buy the software to be able to make a bootable CD.

If there are other options, please let me know. Thanks!
 
#20 ·
After re-cloning the original drive onto the new drive.....PC would boot up but not allow me to log into Windows
When you clone a drive, the Destination or Target drive gets wiped automatically before it starts to copy the files. So you shouldn't have to delete any partitions before hand.
When you say PC would boot up but not allow me to log into Windows What happens? Do you get a login screen? Does it hang at a certain point and not finish booting?
It sounds like the Clone job is only cloning the C: partition and not the whole Disk including your Recovery partition and possibly a boot file. If the Old Drive is damaged it may be cloning the problems of that drive to the new Seagate drive.
If this continues to fail, then go back to using your Image from the USB Drive.
 
#21 ·
What happens is that I get to the login screen -- where it asks for a password (mine has always been blank on this machine)-- and when I hit enter, it proceeds to attempt to load as usual. But, before the desktop appears, I get something like "logging off Windows" and it returns to the login screen.

That's with only the new drive connected. When I connect both, I can get past the login screen to what appears to be normal operations. But everything is very slow, Disk Management won't work, and machine will hang on shutdown attempt. If I open an Explorer window, I see that the new drive appears to have both partitions and directory structure looks identical. However, no matter which SATA slot I connect it to, it is designated drives F: and G: while the old one remains C: and D: Changing boot order appears to have no effect on that. Nor does whether it is designated First Channel Device 0 or 1.

Also, the old drove connected alone, has no such problems. Speedy boot up, Disk Management comes up, shut down will proceed normally. I would think, if these problems on the new drive were originating from copying corrupted sectors from old that the old would display the same behaviour, wouldn't it?
 
#22 ·
Back in business!

I did the following:


  1. Booted into Safe Mode
  2. Disk Management was able to open
  3. Deleted F: and G: partitions on new Seagate drive
  4. Shut down
  5. Swapped SATA slots so new Seagate drive was in original drive's slot and original drive in adjacent slot.
  6. Used Easeus Boot CD to boot up.
  7. Cloned the original drive (now Disk 1) onto new Seagate drive (now Disk 0) -- making sure to move Recovery partition all the way right and stretching the main partition all the way up against it.
  8. Shut down after clone completed.
  9. Disconnected original drive's SATA cable.
  10. Booted up -- and Yay!
I had to go through a "Windows Found New Hardware" reboot -- but machine has booted normally -- as far as I can tell -- three times now. Disk Management shows all space being used on the new drive, and it is properly labeled C: and D: now.


I am going to let well enough alone for a few days--since I need to get back to getting things done. And to make sure if there are problems I can more easily isolate the source. But, then, I will be reconnecting the original drive to see if I can use it as supplementary storage. Once that is up and running, I will probably make a new clone on the USB drive in order to regain the space I lost there.

If questions arise, I'll be back, but is there anything I should do or be aware of before I do those things?

And THANK YOU so much for all your help! I am very grateful!
 
#23 ·
Make sure everything is working correctly and you are satisfied, then create a new Clone. Make sure it looks good in Disk Management.
Shut down the computer and Attach your old HDD, boot into Setup (Bios) and make sure that the Old HDD is not in the Boot order or is after the Seagate drive.
When you boot into Windows on the Seagate drive go to Disk Management, here you can right click and Delete the Volumes/partitions on the Old Drive. Then Right click the Unallocated Space and create a new Simple Volume making it the whole size of the drive then Format it NTFS, Not a Quick Format. This will take much longer but it will check the Old HDD for Bad Sectors, if this fails, then the drive cannot be used.
 
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