New Hard-Drive

[Somerville]

Hey guys,

I've just bought a new Hard Drive because it's about time for an upgrade. That, and Battlefield 2 just won't update to 1.3 anymore even when I uninstall/clean out the registry of any BF2 registries (But if anyone's got a solution - apart from reformat as I've tried that and still no joy, and redownloading the patch yields no luck either - lemmie know!). Anyway, the main part of this is: I want to replace my current hard drive with the new one. It's SATA, and my Motherboard is SATA enabled, as the existing hard drive is SATA - is it as simple as performing the physical swap, and reinstalling Windows XP?

Thanks for your help guys, much appreciated!

[Heavy552 AWG]

Re: New Hard-Drive

Why not add the new drive, move everything over and format the now old drive and use it as a second drive?

[SwiftRetribution]

Re: New Hard-Drive

to your question at the end of post #1, yes it is as simple as a physical swap and installing an OS onto it. As for what Heavy said, you can also do this. I do this most of the time putting music, programs files, important stuff onto it before i reformat.

[Drexor69]

Re: New Hard-Drive

I just used Ghost to move up from my old 74GB SATA to a new 150GB SATA and it worked great. No need to re-install or anything and done in 15 min's or so.

Now, if you've got a relatively old install that's probably got a regestry full of junk I'd say do clean install anyway...

[Somerville]

Re: New Hard-Drive

I think Drexor's right - BF2 won't patch up to 1.3 anymore, meaning I can't play online. So it's probably the registry full o' crap, right? I think I'll just perform the physical swap, and install XP again. Oh, by the way, should I leave my graphics card in when installing XP? Or use the onboard graphics?

[Drexor69]

Re: New Hard-Drive

If you're booting to your video card already then your BIOS is set up properly and you don't need to remove your graphics card for the install.

[Somerville]

Re: New Hard-Drive

Okay, just installed it and it's okay.. ish. Basically, there are occasional reboots for apparantly no reason. Nothing in the event viewer looks out-of-place, and I'm not sure what's going on. I've installed all the drivers for all the hardware i'm using, the fans are all up and running (The processor sits at about 39 degrees idle, and the crashes aren't application-related), and the hard drive's whirring away when it goes to access something. Sometime's they are random, but it usually happens when i try to copy something from CD-R/RW or DVD-R/RW onto my PC. It'll get so far, say 50% - 70% before crashing. I assume, then, the problem is Drive related, but I don't have drivers or anything for the drive. Anybody got any suggestions?

The only OS running on the system is XP. After my neighbour, a PC techie, installed it, he said he had made one big partition on the HD, as I was only going to be running Windows. Obviously the crashes worry me, because if it's during data transfer that the crashes occur, I won't be able to play BF2 - a bit of a shame considering the HD upgrade was caused by not being able to play BF2 on the old HD. Other details:

+ It's SATA, and my MB is SATA enabled.
+ It's 250 Gb in size

My system is running:

+ P4 3.00Ghz
+ ATI Sapphire x800xl
+ 1.5Gb Elixir PC4200 RAM
+ 17" ACER LCD-TV Monitor
+ Microsoft Comfort Curve Keyboard 2000
+ Microsoft Wireless Optical Mouse 2.0
+ ASUS P5ND2-SLI Mobo

So what's the issue here? Any thoughts?

Edit: By the way, other applications such as Printer, WMP, Mouse/keyboard installed no problem, so I don't think it is the drive. Or is it?

[Drexor69]

Re: New Hard-Drive

Sounds to me like the problem might be with your controller and not your drive. Isolate the drives (disconnect them one at a time) and try using them each separately to see if the reboots occor on one or both. If one, you've found your problem drive, if both I'd wager the controller on your MB has gone wonky...

[Somerville]

Re: New Hard-Drive

So it could be that the connector's come lose or something?

[megawhompertoo]

Re: New Hard-Drive

What's your PSU? Kinda' sounds like it's crashing under an intensive CPU + HD + Optical drive load...(memory too, but the power draw is nominal). And that's also a moderately power-hungry video card. Are you running with both drives now? If so, my experience is that you probably need a decent PSU--I'm running a P4 3.0E, x800xt, 2 optical drives, 2hds, and 2 case fans, along with various USB devices, and I'm taxing my little Antec 380W pretty hard.

I've installed all the drivers for all the hardware i'm using, the fans are all up and running (The processor sits at about 39 degrees idle, and the crashes aren't application-related), and the hard drive's whirring away when it goes to access something.

Ok, I believe you...but verify that you have the newest SATA and (edit) EIDE drivers for your MOBO.

So it could be that the connector's come lose or something?

That's possible too. Easiest way to find out would be to open it up and try the copy operations. I'd also do what was recommended above--unplug the drives sequentially, and determine whether you can isolate the problem to a certain drive.

[Somerville]

Re: New Hard-Drive

I have a 500w PSU. Okay, sure, I'll see if there are any more recent updates for the Mobo. I bloody hope this works, and that I can play BF2 oncemore. Last time, it kept saying "Patching Failed", even if i re-downloaded the patch, deleted all registry information, reformatted and reinstalled etc etc. 'Twas more gay than a row of pink tents.

[Somerville]

Re: New Hard-Drive

|Okay, fingers crossed the problem's okay. I'm only getting a few crashes every now and again. I repatched BF2 to try and get Midnight Sun working, and disconnected, only to get a reboot. Could it be that the creases needed ironing out, so-to-speak?

[Drexor69]

Re: New Hard-Drive

If you've got a fresh install you shouldn't be having any issues...