BleepingComputer.com: Hard Drive Help Suggestions Needed

Hi,

Hope someone can give me a few ideas. I'm trying to upgrade the PCs at a friend's small business. About 15 desktops in all. Each one needs a new, larger hard drive. I have the new Seagte hard drives. Here's where it gets fun. The PCs are Dell Dimension 2400s. They are on a peer-to-peer network, all running Windows XP SP2. Every hard drive is unique, and I need to copy the contents exactly as they are to each new hard drive.

I'm used to working with your standard client-server network so I'm a bit baffled. The Dell 2400 Dimension seems unique in that as far as I can tell no one has ever successfully added a second HDD. I've spent 2 weekends trying to get a HDD installed and recognized and that is not an option. Regardless of the setting in the BIOS and how they are jumpered, the PC will ot recognize a second HDD.

So, if you were faced with this challenge, what would be the best way to go about this? Any sugggestions would be greatly appreciated. If I need to provide more info please let me know.

TIA,
Hobie

From what I read...the problem is one of space available...and possibly BIOS. The Dimension 2400 doesn't seem to be configured to add a hard drive.

If it were me, I would simply clone the old drives to the replacement drives, using a program like EASEUS Partition Master Home Edition freeware. - http://www.partition-tool.com/personal.htm.

Once I had done so and was sure that the replacements booted properly, the old drives become history.

Replacing Hard Drive

Louis

A couple of thoughts I have:

Since the original hard drives will be removed anyway, use another computer that will recognise multiple hard drives, and do all the cloning with the drives fitted in that computer.

Another approach may also work with Hamluis suggestion of Easeus, but certainly the free Seagate DiskWizard, which is a feature-limited Acronis TrueImage, will create a bootable CD and clone to a new drive using a USB adaptor. I believe TI will also operate over a network, but I don't know if that capability has been removed from DiskWizard.

The HDD manufacturer's supplied cloning software wants to see its own brand of drive in the computer (not on the USB adaptor) before it will operate, so DiskWizard works for Seagate/Maxtor, if the original drive was Western Digital, they also have a free version of Acronis TI available.

You could get an IDE or SATA to USB adapter and then clone them that way. The only downside is it would take longer to finish.

I have worked on this exact model in the past and had no issues hooking up a second drive to clone the computer. I did not do anything special that I can remember. Standard stuff, check jumpers, use a known working 80 pin two plug cable, check BIOS, which I'm sure you have done but like I said I didn't do anything special. Did you check the BIOS revision it is possible depending on the size of the new drive they are above the size threshold.

Thank you to all who replied. While trying to add the hard drives here's what I tried:

A new IDE cable
Setting jumpers to Master and Slave
Setting jumpers to Cable Select
Setting BIOS to AUTO

There is only room for 1 HDD in the cage but I attached the new IDE cable with 2 connectors and just kind of set the new HDD in the case.

I like the idea of cloning the drive and actually got as far as downloading the Seagate Disk Wizard software but if I can't get the PC to recognize the new HDDs I can't do anything with it. OR am I missing something?

If I use my own PC to clone the drives (not thrilled at the prospect but you gotta do what ya gotta do) can I just attach the new drives as is and clone the image to them? Do they need to be partitioned or formatted first? I've never used cloning software before, so if someone could give me an idea of what to expect and how to prepare the drives I'd be grateful.

Thank you again for taking the time to read this and for the helpful responses. This is a great forum!

Hobie

Did you try to connect the drive on the secondary IDE channel? I think that may have been what I did. I usually do that because you get better throughput with them on seperate IDE channels.

As far as cloning software goes and using your PC you would want to use a bootable CD or flash drive. It is really simple you will select the source drive then you will select the destination drive. It will give you an option so that you can increase the partition size to include the entire new disk if you want. You don't have to do anything to the new drives. The cloning software will create everything you need. All you will have to do is install the new drive in place of the old when and it should power right up.

Hi BB,

No, I didn't try that <smacking forehead>. There's a CD on the second controller but I should have tried that.

What I'm thinking now is to get this USB enclosure:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16817182143

Attach the new seagate drive to that enclosure, load the Seagate Disc Wizard onto the production machine and then clone the production HDD as the Source and use the new Seagate drive as the Destination. Does this sound plausible?

Thank you for all the help! Apolologies if we're not supposed to use external links on this forum.

Thanks again,
Hobie

hi hobie, if you were not able to connect the hd to the internal ide channels then the newegg.com enclosure would do the job. for cloning i would suggest clonezilla http://clonezilla.org/ - a very powerful cloning software - recommend download the lucid version (dl the file clonezilla-live-20100521-lucid.iso from http://clonezilla.org/download/sourceforge...-zip-files.php) and if you are not comfortable with the cloning process would suggest to go through the screenshots section on the clonezilla website and also the wikipedia entry on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_cloning

you should burn the dled iso image to a cd/dvd and use it to boot

best of luck

This post has been edited by cyberfic: 24 May 2010 - 02:47 PM

FWIW: I specifically recall that the Dell instructions indicate that the CS settings are preferred.

It shouldn't make any difference...unless there is a device on the other connection on the cable.

Hard drives/optical drives have been coming preset with C/S for the last 5 years or so now.

If you are using very old (40-wire, 40-pin) cables...to connect the drive...that could be a problem since they do not support C/S settings.

Louis