I have a SATA 160GB HD in a Dell E510. It needs replacing. What do I do when the HD is installed?

Question

I cannot afford to pay someone to replace it and it looks easy but I know I will need to do other thing to it too. Please help!

Answer 1

Yep, it's very simple, you just plug it in, I would say connect it, but don't put it in the bay yet, then boot the computer, if this is your boot drive you are replacing, boot from your operating system CD/DVD, as soon as you get to the hard drive selection screen, you should see your new SATA drive, if not, shut down the computer and install the jumper according to the manual, if the jumper is set correctly, it will slow down the drive (not the RPMs, but the cache) making it compatible with the older SATA v1 motherboards/SATA PCI cards, then boot from the CD/DVD again and you should see the drive, after you install Windows and have it working, then install the hard drive in the bay, installing the hard drive without putting it in the bay first lets you have faster and easier access to the hard drive and jumper settings for when you have problems, without having to remove the hard drive again

You may need the SATA drivers found on the bundled SATA HD CD, you just have to press the F6 key when it tells you, then insert the driver floppy you made from the CD

Answer 2

DESKTOP

mount it to the chasis with screws, plug in the power cord and then the data cable.

LAPTOP

unplug ur hdd and then plug the other one in.

install the OS and then upload ur data to the new drive from cds or usb stick