Topic: Upgrading a Medion 8383XL.

[mistybear]

There is a quite a difference in price which is why I was wondering, I can get a WD 500Gb for $169, but a Seagate 500Gb Sata 11 is $209.

Actually we have found cheaper, but the discussion is still going on, this could take a while.

I wanted to get him a 500Gb for all his games.

[mistybear]

What does Sata 300 mean, is that 1 or 11?

http://www.itestate.com.au/category.asp?ctgcod=C10003062600131

This Western Digital site is quite good...........still don't understand the Sata 150 and Sata 300. Interface?

http://www.westerndigital.com/en/products/ProductMatrix.asp

[Sandra]

SATA 1 is 150 mhz whereas SATA 11 is 300 mhz.
The data transfer rate is faster on the SATA 11 than on SATA 1 but only on a SATA 11 supporting motherboard.

I prefer Western Digital to Seagate but Seagare are usually good drives, others will say that they prefer Seagate no doubt.
I suppose it depends which they have seen fail more than another make which makes people prefer one to another.

[mistybear]

Thanks Sandra, now I understand.

I would prefer to get a Western Digital, once Michael has it he will be installing Vista. If I have enough money I may get a smaller drive and do the same, so your services maybe called upon once again. 

[mistybear]

We decided on a 500GB Western Digital, http://www.westerndigital.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=301

didn't realise that you had to also buy a cable to attach it to the MB, and I didn't realise that they have different connection for the power supply. The drive that is already installed has I think a four large pin connection, but this new drive has a different connection.
Here's a photo of the connections, the left hand side. How do we connect it to the PSU? 

[Sandra]

You can get Molex (the usual 4 pin) to SATA adapters very cheaply but I would be surprised if the new PSU you bought recently didnt already have a SATA power lead.
They are quite thin black connectors about an inch wide.

The Data transfer leads are quite cheap and should be easily available in any pc store.

[mistybear]

Thanks Sandra, we did see

They are quite thin black connectors about an inch wide

something to that effect, but was unsure if that was what it was used for, not a lot of information in the PSU manual. I expect that they believe people who buy these things also know what they are doing.

I really wish that these sorts of devices would come with connection cables, or at least the computer store where you buy the drive from, let you know that they come without cables.
The drive is in his computer but obviously not connected, not a happy boy.

[Sandra]

When you buy a new motherboard the data transfer cables for the floppy, IDE drives and Sata drives usually come included.
Unfortunately when you buy a ready made pc they often leave the SATA cables out.

You will notice that on both the Data and the Power connectors that theres a small L shape at one end MB, that has to line up with the L shape in the drive and for the Data cable at the motherboard end as well.

[mistybear]

Okay, thanks Sandra, Michael is getting a Data cable from a friend, so hopefully tommorrow night we can hook it up. 

[mistybear]

Now that the new drive is in, how can he transfer everything from his 250GB across to the new 500GB, as he wants to reformat or whatever it is, and do a clean install of Vista on the old 250GB and use it as a Media Centre.

Also how does he do a dual boot? 

[Sandra]

Sorry MB, I still havent had time to write the dual booting procedure down for you 

First of all he needs to partition his new drive so that he has room to transfer whatever he wants from his current drive to the new one.
No point transferring the windows folder and contents as that wont work although he may want to save his emails.
No point copying installed programs either as they wil lneed reinstalling.
So he wants his documents, pictures, videos and music etc.
I assume that he has it showing in Disk Management now as an uninitiated drive ?

If so he needs to create and format a partion for his OS, I would suggest 40 gig for XP or 60 gig for Vista.
Then he needs to create and format another partition in the remaining unallocated space on that drive.
This is the partition that he should save his stuff from his original drive to, I usually make a folder on it called Old PC or similar as invariably there is stuff that he will want to delete later as we all save far too much.

He now has to decide whether he is using his 250 gig or the 500 gig as the XP drive.

He needs to install XP on one of the drives as the first OS, then Vista on the second one.

Assuming he is using the 250 gig drive for XP then its safer to disconnect the data cable from the 500 gig drive so he doesnt accidentally format it and lose the saved data.

Ideally he should be using a basic PS2 keyboard so that all the keys work without the OS being installed, USB ones can sometimes not allow the keys to work when installing.
Set the bios to boot from the CD/DVD as first device.
Restart with the XP CD in a drive and when it asks you to press any key to boot from the CD press any key 

Follow the on screen instructions etc and when it comes to the part where it asks where you want to install to there is an option for deleting a partition.
Select this option "D" and press enter then to confirm I think it asks you to press "L" and then press enter.
I assume that you will have 2 partitions on that drive of around 120 gig each showing as 120000mb plus another one showing as 8mb.
Delete all the partition except the 8mb one by repeating the same procedure.
Tnen it should show as the full size of the drive but with no drive letter.
Then press "C" to create a partition.
In the next window it will show a box with the maximum size of partition that you can have, clear the numbers and for XP enter 40000mb that will give you just under 40 gig.
Select the format NTFS Quick option and when its done select C as the partition to install windows on.
Ignore the other partition for now and follow on installing XP by entering the information when asked.
It will reboot a couple of times as its installing but do not press a key when you see the Press any key to boot from CD message as it reboots or you will go round in a loop.

Once windows has installed properly then go into Admin Tools/Computer Management/Disk Management and you can click on the unallocated partition and create a new primary partition of the maximum size it allows, ie dont need to change the numbers in the box and again select the Format NTFS Quick option.

Shut the pc down and connect the second drive data cable again.

Have the Vista DVD in the DVD drive and follow the instructions I sent you before and at the part where it asks you where to install it make sure that you highlight the 60 gig partition of the 500 gig drive.
It will want to format it again just select the NTFS Quick option.
The rest of the installation is as I explained to you before.
Once its finished installing remove the Vista DVD and restart the pc and go into the bios and select the XP hard drive as the first bootable device.

When you restart it should ask you which OS you want to boot into so just select which one and press enter.

Hopefully thats all there is to it 

Thats the traditional way to dual boot by having the earlier OS installed first then installing the later OS afterwards as the later one understands the older one whereas the older one may not understand the newer one.

I still think that the best way to multi boot a pc with 2 or more SATA drives is to just thave a single drive connected and install one OS to that.
Then disconnect that drive and connect the second one and install the other OS to that one.
Then connect both drives and its done.
It doesnt matter which way round you do them and you have no risk of installing to the wrong drive or partition and thereby losing saved data.
There is no problem removing either drive at a later date as each OS is totally independant of the other drive or OS.
You just use F8 when starting the PC to tell it which drive to boot from.
This wasnt as easy to do with IDE drives as you had to enter the bios each time but with SATA drives F8 gives you a simple option of boot devices.

[mistybear]

Wow, Michael is going to have fun doing that. 

It will have to be a time when we both have are able to do it.

The only thing I'm clear on is that the old 250GB is going to be his Media Centre running Vista.

The new 500GB will run XP and all his games, which are all on his 250GB.

Can he transfer all of his media and all of his games that he currently has on the 250Gb over to the 500GB, then once he has formatted the 250GB and installed Vista, can he transfer his games back from the 500GB to the 250GB.

I assume he will have to install XP on the 500GB before he starts this process.

If I'm asking silly questions that you have already explained, I'm sorry, my brain is a little fuzzy, spent the whole day writing stuff for the tribunal. 

Okay, forget all that, he has explained, and I actually got one thing right.....   He first has to install XP on the new 500GB, transfer all his media to it. But the games will have to be reinstalled from scratch to the 500GB as they can't be transfered because of the registry files.

He also let me know he had spoken with you, you can spend the whole day in the house together, but can't seem to get the time to talk. I'll be glad when this tribunal stuff is over.

[Sandra]

Its OK MB, in case you have now confused anyone following this thread I should expalin that I was in touch with Michael last night on messenger, after I posted the info 

He wants XP on the new 500 gig drive and Vista on the old 250 gig drive so I explained that he just needs to change the drives over from what I had written and the respective sizes for the boot partition of each.

He thinks hes going to be ok now but of course if he gets stuck he can post on here using MBs pc or if I am online on messenger he can cotact me on there but I am sure if he takes it step by step he will be ok.

[mistybear]

I discovered something quite surprising tonight. Michael was reading the specs of the Medion 8383XL off the box tonight as he wondered what RAM it had. I said DDR2, he said "no" it's DDR1, which I thought was wrong as I had purchased RAM for his old PC and it was DDR2.
I had a look at the motherboard manual and it is indeed DDR1, oops!  Which is probably why when I put his DDR2 2x1GB Kingston RAM that I purchased, in this, the other RAM died.
But why did his DDR1 cope okay with the DDR2 installed along side, and mine didn't? 

[Sandra]

DDR 1 wont fit in DDR 2 slots and vice versa.
Some mobos had both types side by side but you can only run with one or the other not a mixture of both types.
If I understand you correctly then it shouldnt have run at all with 2 different types of ram in at the same time