Tell Me To Chill Out-fears Of Hard Drive Instal (1 Viewer)

[Dan Joy]

Ok, here goes-- I have a Gateway 500MHz Pentium 3(windows 98SE) with a few gb left on an original 13gb hard drive. I do have a cd burner also. I just added DSL and I am fearful of using up memory. I am about to pull the trigger on Western Digital 80 GB 7200 RPM internal HD for about 40.00 new through OFFICEMAX HARD DRIVE

I am very weary of reloading all programs back on, reconfiguring router, pci ethernet card, programs etc. Also this partitioning thing I don't understand. I have installed my cd burner and ethernet card on my own...CAN I DO THIS? I am stopping by the Gateway store to ask the tech rep if this HD will work with my system.
Thanks

 

[Mike LS]

Once your OS is loaded on the new drive, you won't have much problem.

Are you planning on staying with Win98? If you can upgrade to 2000 or XP, you'll have a much easier time reloading since the time and frustration of reloading drivers will be cut to almost nothing.

You shouldn't have to reconfigure your router...those settings are saved in the router itself....you'll just have to reload the software.

If you had no trouble installing an internal CD burner, you can make the harddrive work too.

 

[Rob Gillespie]

Dan, unless you run into problems it's a pretty painless experience. There is quite a bit to do though so you just have to take your time.

Will you be keeping the existing hard drive in the PC?

 

[Dan Joy]

Will you be keeping the existing hard drive in the PC?

Not sure, any suggestions? I am thinking of upgrading to XP as well. Not sure if I want to do that either.

 

[Rob Gillespie]

Unless your 13gb is particularly slow, it might be worth keeping. You could (as an example) keep your OS and applications on that drive then keep all of your own data on the new one. It really depends how fast that drive can run. Is it a 7200rpm model do you know? If it is, I'd definitely keep it.

Two of my three boxes run XP and I'm fairly happy with it. It's a nice (if over-friendly) OS and I think MS actually do deserve some credit for it.

However it does need a certain amount of resources to run well. It'll run if you've got 128mb of RAM, but is much happier if you've got 256 or more.

My suggestion would be to install 98, get that running nicely, then install XP as a dual-boot. It's VERY easy to do and we can talk you through it all here anyway.

 

[Dan Joy]

Great, thank you to all.