Will there be any problems loading the original Windows
software that came with my Gateway (new in 2001)onto a new
hard drive?

Any suggestions about making sure CMOS (or BIOS?) is set
correctly? Someone cautioned me about this several months
ago when I first got serious about changing the hard drive.

Have people found they prefer external hard drives? Are they
easier to hook up?

I have a Gateway 900c. I have been having myriad problems
with it in the last year or so. Recently, I backed up
everything, cleaned house, so to speak, reformatted the
original hard drive, and re-loaded the software I use. This
improved my computer's performance immensely. However, I am
getting some peculiar error messages upon startup and at
other times. Along with problems earlier this year, these
make me think it's time to replace the hard drive. Even if
the hard drive is not the cause, I think I've got my money's
worth out of the current one. Plus I have the time to learn
more. This is a project. I have bookmarked a number of sites
on the subject of changing out the hard drive.

I use only about 5 Gbyte of my current, 20 Gbyte hard drive.
I figure I'll be happy with an 80 Gbyte drive. Target has a
Western Digital one for $70. Wal-mart has a Seagate one for
$70, also. IIRC, other than Gbytes of space, brand name, and
a few possible peculiarities for fitting it into one's
computer case, is there anything else to watch for?

The Seagate's specs: http://tinyurl.com/8y367 (2 Mb buffer)

The Western Digital's specs: The only things that leap out
at me are that is has an 8 Mb buffer and is in the "EIDE
family of hard drives."

Should I be concerned about the buffer sizes?

Thanks for your patience in helping with my education. I
will be googling as well. I inquired about this earlier this
year and am reviewing the discussion from back then as well.

Elle wrote:
Will there be any problems loading the original Windows
software that came with my Gateway (new in 2001)onto a new
hard drive?

Any suggestions about making sure CMOS (or BIOS?) is set
correctly? Someone cautioned me about this several months
ago when I first got serious about changing the hard drive.

Have people found they prefer external hard drives? Are they
easier to hook up?

I have a Gateway 900c. I have been having myriad problems
with it in the last year or so. Recently, I backed up
everything, cleaned house, so to speak, reformatted the
original hard drive, and re-loaded the software I use. This
improved my computer's performance immensely. However, I am
getting some peculiar error messages upon startup and at
other times. Along with problems earlier this year, these
make me think it's time to replace the hard drive. Even if
the hard drive is not the cause, I think I've got my money's
worth out of the current one. Plus I have the time to learn
more. This is a project. I have bookmarked a number of sites
on the subject of changing out the hard drive.

I use only about 5 Gbyte of my current, 20 Gbyte hard drive.
I figure I'll be happy with an 80 Gbyte drive. Target has a
Western Digital one for $70. Wal-mart has a Seagate one for
$70, also. IIRC, other than Gbytes of space, brand name, and
a few possible peculiarities for fitting it into one's
computer case, is there anything else to watch for?

The Seagate's specs: http://tinyurl.com/8y367 (2 Mb buffer)

The Western Digital's specs: The only things that leap out
at me are that is has an 8 Mb buffer and is in the "EIDE
family of hard drives."

Should I be concerned about the buffer sizes?

Thanks for your patience in helping with my education. I
will be googling as well. I inquired about this earlier this
year and am reviewing the discussion from back then as well.




You definitely want internal, the only reason to get external drives is
if you need portability, and for a system that old it probably won't be
able to boot off an external drive and may not even have USB 2.0 or
Firewire, USB 1.0 is excruciatingly slow for hard drives.

You'll need to find a drive with the correct interface, probably PATA
(EIDE) rather than the newer SATA drives which use an entirely different
connector. Buffer size is not a huge concern, though more is generally
better. The machine is just new enough that virtually any size drive
should easily be detected by the BIOS and the BIOS will be updateable so
if you check Gateway's site you can grab the newest version but I only
recommend mucking with that if you have problems.

Once you have the drive installed, installing the software should be
fairly straightforward.

Q:Will there be any problems loading the original Windows
software that came with my Gateway (new in 2001)onto a new
hard drive?

No problems, but sometimes the software can only installed for a
specific model. I see it couple of times in PowerDVD that comes with
DELL. If it happens, you can edit the file like Custom.ini.

Q.Any suggestions about making sure CMOS (or BIOS?) is set
correctly? Someone cautioned me about this several months
ago when I first got serious about changing the hard drive.

Just load the default setup in BIOS and that it. I think the risk are
in installing HD and connecting the cable, especially the static
electricity .Static electricity can kill the HD contoller board
instantly.
Just do it slowly, and it will be fine.
Also old motherboard (like 440Bx-base board) does not support 128 GB
hard disk, in this case get a promise ultra 100 or 133 card.


Q.Have people found they prefer external hard drives? Are they
easier to hook up?
External is more expensive and slower than internal

You can check whether your HD is faulty by using HD manufacturer
software. There is a software called smartmontools, which reports the
status of HD like spin up time, hour of usage and the staus of
relocation sector etc. This software is quite accurate, try it.

I would recommeded Segate since it is quiet and has 3-year warranty,
and Western digitial has only 1 year. I dont recommed Maxtor since they
fail frequently.

I think gateway 900 motherboard supoort only IDE, not serial ATA. So
you can only choose IDE hard drive
Also,buy HD in Best buy and circuitcity since they offer rebate, and
they may sell it cheap on black Friday next week.

Q. Should I be concerned about the buffer sizes?
Yes, more is faster and better. Get a 7200rpm and 8MB buffer HD.

Just curious, what error messages you got upon startup?

Q:Will there be any problems loading the original Windows
software that came with my Gateway (new in 2001)onto a new
hard drive?

No problems, but sometimes the software can only installed for a
specific model. I see it couple of times in PowerDVD that comes with
DELL. If it happens, you can edit the file like Custom.ini.

Q.Any suggestions about making sure CMOS (or BIOS?) is set
correctly? Someone cautioned me about this several months
ago when I first got serious about changing the hard drive.

Just load the default setup in BIOS and that it. I think the risk are
in installing HD and connecting the cable, especially the static
electricity .Static electricity can kill the HD contoller board
instantly.
Just do it slowly, and it will be fine.
Also old motherboard (like 440Bx-base board) does not support 128 GB
hard disk, in this case get a promise ultra 100 or 133 card.

Q.Have people found they prefer external hard drives? Are they
easier to hook up?
External is more expensive and slower than internal

You can check whether your HD is faulty by using HD manufacturer
software. There is a software called smartmontools, which reports the
status of HD like spin up time, hour of usage and the staus of
relocation sector etc. This software is quite accurate, try it.

I would recommeded Seagate since it is quiet and has 3-year warranty,
and Western digitial has only 1 year. I dont recommed Maxtor since they
fail frequently.

I think gateway 900 motherboard supoort only IDE, not serial ATA. So
you can only choose IDE hard drive
Also,buy HD in Best buy or circuitcity since they offer rebate, and
they may sell it cheap on black Friday next week.

Q. Should I be concerned about the buffer sizes?
Yes, more is faster and better. Get a 7200rpm and 8MB buffer HD.

Just curious, what error messages you got upon startup?

James and Marslee: Thank you very much for your input. I
read (and have re-read) all. It seems very helpful.

This week I am going to try to install a new hard drive I
purchased yesterday evening. I will update this thread on
the outcome.

wrote
snip but comments noted
You can check whether your HD is faulty by using HD
manufacturer
software. There is a software called smartmontools, which
reports the
status of HD like spin up time, hour of usage and the
staus of
relocation sector etc. This software is quite accurate,
try it.

I believe you, but I came across what seems a very good
price for a hard drive yesterday. More below.

I would recommeded Segate since it is quiet and has 3-year
warranty,
and Western digitial has only 1 year. I dont recommed
Maxtor since they
fail frequently.

I think gateway 900 motherboard supoort only IDE, not
serial ATA. So
you can only choose IDE hard drive

I thought IDE and ATA were just different names for the same
thing.

Regardless, from Gateway's site, the specs on the old hard
drive say it is a Seagate with an Ultra ATA/100 interface.
These specs say nothing about a hard drive cache.

Also,buy HD in Best buy and circuitcity since they offer
rebate,

Yesterday from Circuit City I purchased a Seagate 100 Gbyte
(2 Mb cache) internal hard drive ("Ultra ATA/100" interface)
with a five-year warranty. With the rebates, it will have
cost me only $40 + tax. Caveat to newbies: Sometimes getting
the rebater to make good on a rebate is like pulling teeth.
I've never failed to get a promised rebate, though, in the
half-dozen or so instances of major electronic purchases
that offered sizable rebates I've had.

My current computer has only 128 Mbyte of SDRAM, so I'm
thinking if I want real improvement then I should double the
RAM.

and
they may sell it cheap on black Friday next week.

Office Depot said that, too. Oh well.

Q. Should I be concerned about the buffer sizes?
Yes, more is faster and better. Get a 7200rpm and 8MB
buffer HD.

Just curious, what error messages you got upon startup?

Most recently, it's said a few times it couldn't even find
the hard drive. I turn it off, re-start, and the error goes
away.

The error messages have varied a lot. I've become so
resigned (or lazy) that it's likely a new hard drive, or at
least it wouldn't hurt to replace the old one, that I
stopped taking any note of the errors.

If it's not the hard drive, I am prepared to slowly rebuild
this computer. I put in a new power supply about a year ago,
and I now vacuum out the casing twice a year (I have cats
who shed). I realize proper cooling is important to the
longevity of the electronics yada. I've studied the
internals and removed the floppy drives while cleaning it
out, so I am becoming more savvy on maintaining and building
my own computer. This after years of cussing computer
manufacturers such as HP and Gateway for a variety of ills
and/or the poor documentation on their machines. (Though I
think Microsoft's chaotic "engineering" is likely at the
root of the problem for many computer ills. Pardon my
amateur venting, though I do write as a much experienced
mechanical engineer. Or pretenses toward same.)

Reformatting and reinstalling all my software went
relatively smoothly the other week, and did help performance
a lot. So per internet suggestions, I am likely going to do
this once a year.

"Elle" wrote in message
news

I think gateway 900 motherboard supoort only IDE, not
serial ATA. So
you can only choose IDE hard drive

I thought IDE and ATA were just different names for the same
thing.


They are, he was referring to *serial* ATA, or 'SATA', a relatively new
technology. ATA is the old style IDE connector with the flat ribbon cable
the vast majority of PCs still use, which, since serial ATA came out, has
increasingly become referred to as PATA or parallel ATA. Confusing, isn't
it! SATA is potentially faster than standard ATA, uses much smaller
connectors and thinner, easier to route cables. It cannot be daisy chained
like parallel ATA, each drive requires its own socket on the motherboard or
serial ATA card.

You can add a cheap serial ATA card to a PCI slot on your system if you
wantg to use a serial ATA drive, but I wouldn't bother- you probably
wouldn't notice any performance gain in an older PC.

Regardless, from Gateway's site, the specs on the old hard
drive say it is a Seagate with an Ultra ATA/100 interface.
These specs say nothing about a hard drive cache.


ATA100 is fine, your hard drive controller is probably only ATA66 or ATA100
anyway. ATA133 is the common speed now, and while a AT133 drive will work
fine in your system, you wouldn't get the extra benefit anyway. Don't worry
about the size of the cache. Most people using their PCs for everyday tasks
would never know the difference anyway. Put it this way- there's no way the
new hard drive will be any slower than what you had!

Dave

"Dave D" wrote
"Elle" wrote
I thought IDE and ATA were just different names for the
same
thing.


They are, he was referring to *serial* ATA, or 'SATA',

Oh... yes, I noticed from googling that SATA was different
from ATA.

Serial. Got it now.

snip but comments noted
Don't worry
about the size of the cache. Most people using their PCs
for everyday tasks
would never know the difference anyway. Put it this way-
there's no way the
new hard drive will be any slower than what you had!

Yes, the same speed will be fine. Thanks for posting your
experience. It helps.

Update: This afternoon I installed the new internal hard drive, and then my
old software. All's great. The only thing that was persnickety was the
Seagate installation documentation.

Seagate's software had the option to do some sort of diagnosis and check of
my old hard drive, along the lines maybe of what Marslee mentioned, I think.
The documentation said 40% of hard drives brought to Seagate ostensibly for
repair were actually fine. I gave the diagnosis software a shot thrice, but
the diskettes it told me to make for this never got to working. It's
possible my old hard drive wouldn't cooperate, either. I lost about an hour
playing with this.

The Seagate steps for putting in the new hard drive are not presented
perfectly straightforwardly. I almost would have been better off winging it,
because the old hard drive looks almost exactly the same as the new one, and
I'd been in the casing before and, with tips from here, knew what to seek.
But there are some startup diskettes that have to be made. They may be vital
to getting the new hard drive going, too. So one has to slog through some
confusion with the Seagate documentation.

I did not have to mess with BIOS or CMOS. The Seagate documentation did have
some cautions and troubleshooting steps for this, were one to have problems.

My computer sounds better. It was making some odd cyclic noises which I
thought were either the power supply fan cycling somehow, or maybe the hard
drive. Also, installation seemed to go somewhat faster this time than when I
did a re-install a few weeks ago. (I timed installation of all the software
then
and kinda kept watch on it today.) Maybe this new hard drive is giving me a
bit more speed compared to my old one?

I'll wait a day or so, and if all remains well, send in my rebate request.

Thanks again James, Marslee, Dave, and Puck. My first efforts at maintaining
or repairing my computer a few years ago were excruciatingly laborious and
rarely successful. Now, cause folks like you donate some time, I have some
hope I can "take command" and keep building on my database, saving my
hard-earned money for charities and skiing.

I will try to return your favor to others with the skills I have in other
areas.