Calling all computer savvy members!

Well, my computer has been giving me the "click of death" sound! "CLICK, CLICK, CLICK" is all I hear from the hard drive! Doing ANYTHING takes 15 minutes longer than it should! It is begging for me to put it out of its misery ...and mine!

So, last night I bought a new hard drive online and Windows 7 (again) since my current Windows 7 is only an upgrade from Vista version.

If anyone has any words of wisdom or encouragement for my daughter & I before we tackle this project Friday night, it would be extremely appreciated! She starts IT classes in the fall and I sure have been giving her alot of hands on experience before then since she recently installed RAM, a new graphics card and helped me with the upgrade to Windows 7.


She is blaming this latest disaster on the fact that I do not defragment regularly and that I store way to many photos on my computer! [:$]

A few people have told me installing the hard drive is easy and we will do fineso I hate to say it but I have my reservations about this! [:|]

Denise

Denise


You didn't have to buy a new copy of windows. But if you didn't have the Vista Disc it could be problematic.


Also, for what you are spending, I don't know how old your computer is but I would think you could buy a new machine for not to many more dollars than what you just spent. The last full copy of windows I bought was $199 and for a few hundred more I could have gotten the whole computer at best buy and it would be much better than a three or four year old machine.

Hard drives are very cheaply made these days, and a good chunk of them will fail. Defragmenting won't stop hardware faults, and the clicking is an indication of a fault.


Copy everything off the clicking drive, and then dispose of it. Don't wait for it to fail entirely. If it's under warranty (Seagate is typically 5 years, everyone else 1 year), see if you can get an RMA # to ship it off for a replacement.


edit, re Windows purchase: I think if you install on a fresh drive, and not over top of Vista, it will ask you to enter your Vista key during installation. I don't think you need to buy another copy.

The computer is about 4-1/2 yrs. old. I spent less than $200 for the 2 TB hard drive and Windows 7 so it seemed like the best way to go. I figured it would save me about $400 at least. I am wondering if doing it this way will buy me another couple years out of this machine though.


I do have the Windows 7 upgrade disk I believe but thought it would be less headaches doing the switch.


I don

Ai...yet another probem...that must be aweful! If it's of any help, a month ago my brother upgraded his pc and we installed it together. Untill last week it was running fine, but last week it got slower and he experienced the famous Blue Screens of Death. Crashes... After some checks we saw(memtest86) that one of the 2 memory sticks wa corrupt. It was not the cheapest memory and it was even a reliable brand, but it still broke down after just a month. Things like that happen. (even with Mac's[;)])

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Originally Posted by ddt0725

A few people have told me installing the hard drive is easy and we will do fineso I hate to say it but I have my reservations about this! [img]/emoticons/emotion-8.gif[/img]

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If it's just installing the disk and reinstalling windows, you should be fine. That's fairly easy to do. Remove both connections from your old hard drive. Deassemble the HDD from your casing(by either screws or some sort of srewless design). Reassemble the new one and connect the two cables. One is for power and the other is for the Data-communication.


What could go wrong? (apart from deinstalling and reinstalling the HDD's)


1 - Your old HDD might be using an older interface type called IDE. Your new HDD is most likely a Sata disk. The connectors for both disks are different. Both power and data cable are different.


solution: use the other type of connectors.


2 - Your power supply might not have enough suitable connectors. Solution: use some converters.


3 - Your mainboard lacks enough Sata-connectors. Solution: you need a PCI or PCI-E sata card.


4 - You don't have place for a PCI or PCI-E expansion card.... you need to buy a different mainboard.


5 - Worse case scenario...If all 4 points appear, you might as well buy a new pc, since that's a lot easier[:P]

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Originally Posted by ddt0725

She is blaming this latest disaster on the fact that I do not defragment regularly and that I store way to many photos on my computer! [img]/emoticons/emotion-10.gif[/img]

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Your pc will slow down when your hard drives are getting fuller. When it reaches over about 75% you will start to notice this more and more. Also if the information is fragmented over your disk, it will slow your pc down a bit. But the problem you describe souds like a true hardware issue. Something that isn't going to be solved by defragging or cleaning up your disk.





If it is the only disk you use, make sure you backup good. Don't forget all your photo, videos, Lightroom catalogue(s), your browserfavorites and what I tend to forget...if you use a mailing program like microsoft outlook, don't forget to back up your emails [A]





Good luck [:$] You can always send me a message(for morale support[;)]) if your getting into more trouble than anticipated.

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Originally Posted by ddt0725

I am wondering if doing it this way will buy me another couple years out of this machine though.

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Maybe. I have a Dell that is just a little newer than yours. I put some money in it then the mother board failed. Its not worth fixing compared to what I can get a new one for that is equal to it.


I have a 7 year old Sony that is still going strong. In the 7 years I have had the Sony the wife and I have went through2 Dells, 2 Gateways and a HP.We have twoSony's we bought years ago, a lap top and the stand alone are being used by the kids and still kicking.


The other part of the questions is did the machine perform well enough before. If it handled photoshop and your other editing software programs fine then it should continue to do so. The biggest gripe I have with windows is bugs. My work machine has had to be wiped twice in two years because of bugs, and I do not go any where risky. On an older machine, if it is marginal in performance for what you are doing at its best, it gets intolerable if it gets a few unwanted pests on it.

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Originally Posted by ddt0725

I spent less than $200 for the 2 TB hard drive and Windows 7 so it seemed like the best way to go

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What brand and type of HDD did you buy? A lot of the 2TB hard drives(not all) are build to be backup- and storage-disks and are therefor often slower spinning disks and therefor more powerfriendly.(5400RPM vs 7200RPM normal disks) I have one as a backup disk as well (Samsung F4EG) and it's definitely not slow, but it is slower than the regular hard drives that I use and that are spinning at the regular 7200RPM.


If it would be your primairy disk, you might want to have a look at that. If you're having it as a second disk or backup disk, you're ok. The best thing is to have your operating system and programs separated from your files. If for some reason your operating system fails, you always have the files on a safe disk. Oviously in your case where it is a hardware problem, you'd have the same odds.


PS: I forgot one point in my previous message. If your old drive is indeed an IDE disk and the new drive is a SATA disk, you might need a Sata data cable. They're usually delivered with your mainboard and usually not included with a hard drive. They're easy to get though. The same thing for he Sata power connector: If you don't have one, the converter cable is easily obtainable.

This is the hard drive I bought ...


www.tigerdirect.com/.../item-details.asp


This is my computer ...


h10025.www1.hp.com/.../product


Hopefully, I have all that I will need! You're starting to scare me, Jan!

One of my other concerns is if the Photoshop & Lightroom I just bought will be able to be transferred onto the new hard drive or if it will think I am trying to put it on a second computer and not allow it!

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Originally Posted by ddt0725

Hopefully, I have all that I will need! You're starting to scare me, Jan!

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Sorry Denise [A] I'll try to make it sound better next time [;)]


According to the prouct specifications on the HP site, this should be your main board:


http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf-JAVA.../c00757541.jpg


You're lucky! It has a lot of colors and I like colors [:D]


Whoops, I have also made a big mistake. I talked about IDE connectors, but they are actually called PATA connectors. (Parallel Ata) I should have known that.


Most important for you is that I mentioned Sata and <span style="text-decoration: line-through;"]IDE Pata disks. This mainboard has 3<span style="text-decoration: line-through;"] IDE Pata data connections and 4 Sata data connections. The <span style="text-decoration: line-through;"]IDE Pata connections are the blue(floppy disk) and black connections in the bottom right corner and the connection on the middle right edge (next to the 24pin main board power connector). You can easily check if your current hard drive is connectred to either one of these connections.


The Sata connectors are the yellow, blue, black and white connector next to the two IDE connectors on the bottom right corner.


In short, first check if your current hard drive is connected by either Pata or Sata. <span style="font-size: large;"]Good news: if you still have the 400GB drive that was installed originally(according to the website), you're having a Sata disk, so this will all be very easy!


Since the HP website doesn't give any info on your power supply. I cannot tell you much about that, but since it powers this one, it should be able to power the new drive.

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Originally Posted by ddt0725

This is the hard drive I bought ...


www.tigerdirect.com/.../item-details.asp

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It's not a 5400RPM drive which I was talking about, but it's still a slower running hard drive than the regular ones(7200RPM).


It is a Sata drive, so it has to be connected in one of the four Sata connections. The hard drive will not be delivered with any cable. (and it might not even contain some screws). This isn't a problem if your old drive is also Sata as the website shows.


While it isn't the fastest driver there is, it does have a nice big buffer and it features Sata 6-Gbs(or Sata3) which is futureproof and if I'm not mistaken suitable for sata 3Gbs(or Sata 2) as well(which is on your ain board).


I don't have experience with installing Windows on this kind of drive so I don't know what performance you can expect. I'll do a little Googling, perhaps I can tell you more later.


Bottom line is that installing this hard drive shouldn't be too difficult [:D]

For software from a large vendor with limited number of installations, there is usually a way to deactivate/uninstall and reclaim an install.

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Originally Posted by ddt0725

One of my other concerns is if the Photoshop &amp; Lightroom I just bought will be able to be transferred onto the new hard drive or if it will think I am trying to put it on a second computer and not allow it!

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That will not be a problem. You can even have photoshop on diffrent machines, you just aren't supposed to use photoshop on both machines at once.





Reading Jan's comments and directions he would have me worried to.

Adobe

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Originally Posted by HDNitehawk

Reading Jan's comments and directions he would have me worried to.

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Haha...it's because I asked myself the question "what could go wrong?" What problems could she run into?


If I'd do that every time I'm about to drive a car or jump onto my mountainbike....hmm...[A]

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Originally Posted by HDNitehawk

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Originally Posted by ddt0725

One of my other concerns is if the Photoshop &amp; Lightroom I just bought will be able to be transferred onto the new hard drive or if it will think I am trying to put it on a second computer and not allow it!

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That will not be a problem. You can even have photoshop on different machines, you just aren't supposed to use photoshop on both machines at once.

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Also copying the Lightroom catalogue is very easy. I wouldn't try to copy program files though. Just re-instal the programs.

[View:http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/100/1008779.html]


Adobe's website instructions

Alright Denise, I googled around a bit. And the hard drive you bought should be alright to use as a primairy disk. However it will be slower than a faster running disk. How much? I'm not entirely sure. If you want, I could test it on my brothers pc.


I tested on my own pc, but I'm using multiple drives in raid, so that's not really a good comparison.


So as far as I'm concerned you're not going to have major trouble when replacing your current hard drive.


The only thing you might need to do is change the boot-order in bios (if it isn't already so) to boot from DVD first if you want to install windows again. Afterwards you can change the order again. (having the hard drive to boot first usually decreases the boot up time, which is good)

Thanks so much everyone for the info on the hard drive and adobe!!! This is all very helpful! Especially not knowing that I needed to deactivate and reactivate the adobe product.


I guess I should have done more research before buying this hard drive though. It

Denise,


I think your primary issues have been addressed. It definitely sounds like the hard-drive, I would minimize usage until you actually make the swap or it could die completely taking all you unbacked up files to it's grave. I would use it's last resources backing up anything of value to you that you do not have a current backup copy of. In addition, if you have any sensitive personal information (taxes, bank/investment accounts, Quicken, etc.) you want to destroy the old hard-drive -- the disk(s) -- before discarding it.


I have a Dell XPS which is about the same age as your machine (I think, time goes too quickly [*-)]). It came with Vista Ultimate (what an oversell that was![;)][;)]) with the XP UPGRADE option. I say upgrade loudly since Microsoft in their wisdom realized (without admitting it, of course) that Vista was a very poor OS, (remember ME, the first Vista?). On business and top-end systems they offered the option of the XP Professional upgrade (they called it a downgrade).


Now that I have got that out of my system, I like XP Pro and have not gone to windows 7 on this machine -- it does what I want well. (I do have it on my new laptop and it is definitely an upgrade from Vista.) I do not know if the problem is XP or my BIOS, but the largest harddrive I can use is 1TB. I would check to make sure your machine can recognize a 2TB hard-drive before you start "surgery". That would not put a big grin on your faces if you get it back together and it will not start, just sayin'. You want to make sure you can put a 2TB as your main drive before you start.


Good luck,


Chris

Oh goodness, I sure hope it can take 2TB! I guess I have to figure out how to find out without the only way being to try it!


And yes, I sure do remember Windows ME! I had that before I went to Vista so my whole computer experience has been quite the rocky adventure! Sometimes, it

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Originally Posted by ddt0725

I didn't really know what to look for and this sounded like it would be alot faster than what I had originally but I guess not.

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I didn't say that [;)] This drive might be faster than your current drive. I have done some testing on my drives and while my 2TB Samsung Green Disk (very much the same) is quite full it is actually not that slow. The read and write speeds aren't bad at all. Only a little slower than the regular disks.


The biggest difference is in the disks access times. (Access time is the time delay or<span style="color: #000000;"] latency between a request to an electronic system, and the access being completed or the requested data returned)


The 7200RPM disk had an average access time of 11.7ms while the 5400RPM disk had 15.6ms. This causes the disk to appear slower. Programs take a little longer to load etc.


For comparison, my SSD has an average access time of 0.17ms.Oh and don't forget that my regular disks are like a year newer than the green disk.

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Originally Posted by ddt0725

I hope it is not going to be so slow that it drives me crazy ...correction crazier!

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Probably not. Your best bet is to just install it and try it out. If you feel that it doesn't do what you want it to do, you can always add a faster primairy drive and keep the 2TB drive for your photos and keep the operating system and your photos separate. That will improve speeds even more.


I'm a big fan of multiple disks so you have your sensitive photos "safer" when you have bugs, virusses and crashes. But obviously it is more expensive. A good choice for a primairy hard drive would be the Western Digital 1TB Caviar Blue disk. Or you could use an SSD for an even faster system.

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Originally Posted by Chris White

I do not know if the problem is XP or my
BIOS, but the largest harddrive I can use is 1TB. I would check to make
sure your machine can recognize a 2TB hard-drive before you start
"surgery"

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It's probably your bios. Windows XP service pack 2 and 3 support 2TB drives for sure. I googled a bit and noticed that more people have the same problem, which seems like a selfcaring problem in some occassions.

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Originally Posted by Jan Paalman

I'm a big fan of multiple disks so you have your sensitive photos "safer" when you have bugs, virusses and crashes. But obviously it is more expensive. A good choice for a primairy hard drive would be the Western Digital 1TB Caviar Blue disk. Or you could use an SSD for an even faster system.

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That really sounds like a great thing for me to do! First I will see how this works out but I will definitely keep this idea as an option if I need to change things! Thanks, Jan!

Denise

No problem Denise. I think you

Hi Denise...


Sorry to hear about your HDD issues. Depending how important your time is, you may want to perform a system backup of the system drive onto DVD(s) and then perform a restore once the new drive is installed into the system. The only problem with this is that you may end up with 10 DVD

Thanks, elmo! I will look into the link you provided.


It does look like I have everything backed up onto my external hard drive.


My main concern now is spysweeper not letting me install again ...I

The antispyware that comes with windows 7 is pretty good the way it is (security essentials) and might not need a "paid" version of anything else.

Also, there is a free one online. I can

Licenses for Microsoft is actually remarkably easy. There

Thank you, weilin ...I will! I am working right now but this is first on my list to straighten out when I get home. I need to make sure all programs will be able to load back on before doing anything!


Thanks again!


Denise

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Originally Posted by Jan Paalman

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Originally Posted by Chris White

I do not know if the problem is XP or my
BIOS, but the largest hard-drive I can use is 1TB. I would check to make
sure your machine can recognize a 2TB hard-drive before you start
"surgery"

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It's probably your bios. Windows XP service pack 2 and 3 support 2TB drives for sure. I googled a bit and noticed that more people have the same problem, which seems like a selfcaring problem in some occassions.

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I am running service pack 3. Again, I am not sure if it is my BIOS or the XP. What I am suggesting to Denise, is that if her machine does not fire up, and you will know before you get into changing any program licenses, before becoming too concerened, try a 1TB hard-drive. I was aware there could be a problem when I ordered my 2TB, but I gave it a shot since it was a second internal for -- what else -- raw files and my other work flow. I ended up using a 1TB and it went very smooth. I am going to use the "extra" 2TB drive to build a unit with my son, something I had in the back of my mind when I ordered the 2TB hard-drive. In addition, for what is worth, I do not think the savings is enough to justify the green hype, I always go with 7200 RPM drives. There is a value to time, if it costs me $0.95 more per month to work a little faster, that is a trade-off I will take.

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Originally Posted by ddt0725

Also, there is a free one online. I can't
remember what it is called. AVG I think ...on filehippo.com.

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The free AVG is a pretty good product. I have used it on a couple of machines without any problems. It does not seem to use a lot of resources,either.

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Originally Posted by andnowimbroke

The antispyware that comes with
windows 7 is pretty good the way it is (security essentials) and might
not need a "paid" version of anything else.

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I agree with Greg, thus far it is all I am using on our "newest" laptop and it seems to be working well.


Denise, I am sure once you and your daughter start the project, you will find that it will go smoother than you are currently fearing.[:)]


Chris

Best of luck. If you have any urgent questions feel free to PM me for my number. I do ASIC design now (Intel) but I used to work IT for 7 years. This should be a interesting stroll down memory lane. I have no qualms giving another photographer a hand.

Thank you :)


I do have some good news ....a few months back my external hard drive went "corrupt" on me (I

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Originally Posted by ddt0725

I do have some good news ....

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See your luck is changing already!

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Originally Posted by ddt0725

a few months back my external hard drive went "corrupt" on me (I'm just full of bad luck) and I lost 1,000's and 1,000's of photos ...all of my daughter's wedding photos, newborn grandbaby pics, photos of my mom who has since gone to better place and many, many others!

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That is why I use multiple external hard-drives for parallel backups. They do occasionally fail, but the odds of two or three (I actually use three for the type of images you lost) failing at the same time is highly unlikely. Much easier than trying to recover from a bad drive. And, external storage is relatively cheep. I back up everything important in at least two places. I bet you will going forward too.

Without a doubt, I am!! I am also going to look into online storage back-up because I still don

Personally, I do not use online storage, I am not comfortable with all my personal information (that has not already been culled) on someone else's storage. External hard-drives are cheep and a couple of also relatively in expensive fire safes in different locations are my personal preference.


I have not heard of the Magical Jelly Bean, but it sounds like something I will look into.

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Originally Posted by ddt0725

Anyone here ever use Magical Jelly Bean?

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Only once and Mom got real mad because I traded our cow for the beans.

Magical Jelly Beans....I tried some of them in college, work up in a strangers apartment with my underwear.......


Ohh you mean THE Magical Jelly Bean, well you start off with your remote in your mouth and ....:)

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Originally Posted by HDNitehawk

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Originally Posted by ddt0725

Anyone here ever use Magical Jelly Bean?

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Only once and Mom got real mad because I traded our cow for the beans.
<div style="CLEAR: both"]</div>

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LOL! You have been hanging around Steve U. way to much!!

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Originally Posted by Steve U

Ohh you mean THE Magical Jelly Bean, well you start off with your remote in your mouth and ....:)

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I really set myself up for this! [:P]

magic jelly bean keyfinder is the other utility that will give you a list of the keys on your computer. It does the same thing as Produkey. Either will work.

Well, the process has begun and at the moment it is not going well! Everything has been backed up, deleted and deactivated from the old hard drive. For the last hour my daughter has been trying to take the old hard drive out of the computer. One screw to go and we cannot get it out! It is facing the top of the tower one inch or so from the top of the tower and we just don