h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I've just had a look inside my computer, a pretty standard PC, and I can see a big upright componant, that I'm assuming is a mother board, and the floppy and CD drives are plugged in at right angles in the front of it. at the back I can work out which is a network card. But I can't for the life of me work out which is the C drive.

I need to buy a new hard drive and I'm assuming that they can't be that difficult to fit, but am I being a little naive?

Depends on how old but your hard drive will also usually be bolted to the front of the computer somewhere nearish the A: drive and the cd-rom if you have one.
The hard disk is about the same size as the floppy drive but obv. has no slot at the front. It will have a wide cable (usually grey) going in the back. One edge of this 'ribbon' cable will be marked red or dotted red. The cable looks like (and indeed is!) a lot of very thin wires stuck together. One of this little wires will be colour red as described. The hard disk will also have a power cable to it, usueall 4pin connector but may have been doubled up so it may have 4 or 8 wires running into this. Coloured red/black/black/yellow on mine. Basically same as the floppy but not slot for a disk and poss. a bit taller.

Fitting is simple but your sounding like this isn't your thing. You have to get the BIOS to recognise the new disk, format and poss install windows if it is a replacement. If the original one still works fine then you should be able to just add new disk as an extra depending on whether you already have extra disks or not.

I think I brought it in early 2002 late 2001, not long enough enough to expect the hard drive to get ed

Right *dusts self down from grovelling around on the floor* I can see it now, it's just below the A drive, exactly as you described, in fact if I lift the ribbon cable up I can see a lable on it with the specifications. It also looks just like the hard drive that I want to buy in the catalog.

This is a case of replacing my hard drive, as my old one is "damaged" according to scan disk.

Whilst it isn't my thing, this is something I'd like to be able to do, if you get my drift.

Still I reckon I could get it out easily enough I'd just need a screw driver, and I could probably get another one in. I can manage to reformat my hard disk so I expect that installing things again would be about hte same.

But how do I get the BIOS to recongise the new one?

Hmm, well OK, if you are junking the old disk, please make d*mn sure you have your windows CD or floppy disk available otherwise you are going to have to go on the beg to be able to format the new drive.
Playing with the BIOS is always fun, given the fun when you get it wrong
If you go into the BIOS on startup (usually by pressing the delete key oduring the memory check but may be completely different on yours) there will be a harddisk section where you can tell it to auto find the new disk and recognise it. Then you just save the settings and exit, providing the details are the same as the new hard disk (it will say x Cylinders, n Tracks, LZ, and other stuff.

If not sure, post here at each stage with the options presented.

More importantly what are the specs for the one you are buying and how much are you paying as there are a lot of rip off merchants out ther!

Right I'm considering buying a new hard disk from Novatech (www.novatech.co.uk) who I brought my pc from, the PC was really cheap and I've brought other peripherals from them so I know that they do exisit. I haven't had a shop around which I will do before handing over credit card details.

Their cheapest opition is 80 GB + 2MB cache for £70.50 including VAT? reasonable? my current hard drive which was adequate before it messed up, was 20 GB and certainly adequate for everything I needed..

But do yuo think that's reasonable

I know what you mean about pressing Del to enter set up, thuogh I don't understand much that goes on after that.. I may have to post here at each stage from my flatmates laptop.

Hmmm, possibly a little expensive depending on what manufacturer and seek time and stuff. Although only by 5 or 10 quid so if you know and trust the suppliers then probably worth it.
80Gb isd more than I have and mines a games PC which notoriously take up space

If you decide its too much you can always give it to me

I've just been into their special offers section and discovered 120 GB for £88 not that I have any need for that kind of memory. I don't really use this computer for games, I still have my SNES for that.

YOu wouldn't know what an serial ATA interface is would you?

erm, actually, no. I thought I did but I have just noticed on a few sites that 'ATA-nnn' and 'Serial ATA' are separated. I know not why so I would hold off ordering just at the moment.

In fact, looking around it is completely different because of the 'Serial' bit. Therefore I think you cannot use this one.

God I hope a hardware geek comes along shortly!

Maybe I should go to ask h2g2 it's self! there might be space bettween the word games.. it does get more traffic.

*Wishes he'd paid more attention when Patrick and Leo were explaining this on TV*

http://www.techtv.com/screensavers/howto/story/0,24330,3407182,00.html
http://www.techtv.com/screensavers/supergeek/story/0,24330,3407300,00.html
http://www.serialata.org/about/index.shtml

Hummm according to those links the ATA series should have backward compatability with the IDE's, and it's meant to autoinstall as well. but if it does why aren't these features mentioned on the website attempted to sell me the product?

thing is serial is different to parallel. So backward compatible is probably true, but Serial ATA is the later technology therefore if your PC has serial ATA interface (I doubt!) then backwards comnpatibility would allow you to use a normal ATA disk.

The important bit being:-

Serial ATA electronics and connectors will differ from Parallel ATA, however the technology is software compatible and OS transparent. It is anticipated that there will be adapters to facilitate forward- and backward-compatibility of hard disks on PC systems.

So they envisage parallel to serial convertor cables to enable a Serial ATA disk to connect to a PC like yours.
I'd be dead suspicious and avoid like the plague and get a normal ATA disk, but then I am overly cautious

Humm a good point, gosh I'm completely out of my depth now, I have another solution to my technical problems - using my flatmate's laptop. but I do need to give my PC a good seeing too, so to speak.

Umm - 'damaged' according to scan-disk means it has an area it can't read. This is quite common with disks, and it possible that you could resolve your problem by re-formatting it.

What operating system are you running ? If its Windows - what flavour ?

Thanks good advice, I've thought of that and reformated, but it's still dogey in other ways, I keep getting blue screens of death, saying that it can't write to an area of C and data is lost. And the whole thing keeps crashing.

I've already brought a new one, and whilst I was running windows 98 I've decided to make a dramatic switch and become a Linux user. He's going too help me get it all set up in return for a curry.

*shakes nervously*

OOOer Missus.

Linux is good - but there's not as much support and hand-holding, its also more robust, but less idiot proof.

You'll either love it or hate it.

It's no going back for me,.. I suppose with a good book it will be a new project for me. In fact it should be arriving today I'd better get dressed and go and ask at the post office.

My computer now won't boot.. this hard disk is desperatly needed.