Installing the operating system

Ok with the startup disk still in the drive turn your computer on and like before you will want to choose start with CD-ROM support then press enter. You will see the A:\ prompt you will need to change this to your CD-ROM drive which should be the d drive so put the disk that contains your operating system in your
CD-ROM drive and type D:\setup and press enter. Now if a message comes up that says invalid drive then type E:\setup and press enter. Some computer are different they will assign different drive letter to the CD-ROM when using the startup disk. The setup process will start there again it may take 30 min. to an hour depending on the speed of you computer to complete the install process. Once the install is complete you can remove all the disks from their drives and restart your computer. When you restart your computer it will go though and install some of the files that the motherboard needs so you will see little windows popping up saying found new hardware and installing software for it. Now depending on the hardware you have in your computer you may need the disks that came with your computer for the sound, video, modem and network cards. Your computer will prompt you when it finds the new hardware and ask you to insert the disk for the hardware it is trying to install.

Setting up old hard drive to copy files

Now to setup the old drive to copy your files is going to be a lot easier than what you just went though, and when you are done you can leave the drive in the computer and use it for extra storage space. Ok you will need to turn your computer off and unplug it from the wall outlet remove the cover like you did at the beginning. Unplug the power cable from the hard drive then the ribbon cable now on the back of the drive there will be the little jumper pin as we talked about in the beginning. You will need to set your new drive to master and your old drive to slave. If you look at the ribbon cable there should be two connector on it the middle connector will connect to your old drive and the connector on the end will connect to the new drive. When connecting the cable make sure you have the black or red strip facing the power connector on the hard drive. Then plug in the power cable on both drives and replace the cover.

Ok when you turn the computer back on you will need to enter the cmos setup again and auto detects the hard drives. If everything is connected wright you should see your new drive will popup first, press y then enter to accept the new drive then press y and enter when you see your old drive on the screen then press y and enter on the last two that will show up. Now when you add a second drive your drive letters will change for example your new drive will always be drive C but your old drive will now become drive D and your CD-ROM drive will become drive E. If everything checks out then press f10 to save your changes and restart your computer. Now when your computer starts up go into windows explorer you should see drive C and drive D which drive D will be your old drive with your files on it. Next create a new directory on your new drive and name it old hard drive then just copy your files into that directory. When you install all your other programs like your word and excel you can then copy the files from the old hard drive directory to the appropriate directory that those programs store the file they create. And that's it you have successfully installed a new hard drive and if you can do this you can do almost any upgrade to your computer and save a lot of money in the process.