[Wolfeymole]

Once you have backed up your stuff to the external drive shut down and disconnect it.

Remove the old internal drive at the same time.

Fit the new drive and reboot tapping F2 or the Del key or whatever key takes you into the bios.

Make sure the primary boot is the optical drive as first boot and then put the Windows 7 disk in the drive and press F10 to save the settings and exit.

The screen should go dark momentarily and then you will see the message "Press any key to boot from cd".

Windows will then start installing and will reboot occasionally and you will see that message again but this time PRESS NOTHING but simply let it install.

Once Windows has fully installed shut down and attach the external drive and reboot.

Go into Control Panel / Backup and Recover and click Restore My Files.

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OK. Thanks again. Don't know if i will have time for a few days to sort it out. Will let you know when it's done.

[Sking0]

OK. Thanks again. Don't know if i will have time for a few days to sort it out. Will let you know when it's done.

[Wolfeymole]

Ok Sking please do mate.

[phillpower2]

See if any of the bad HDD sounds at the attached link sound the same or similar http://datacent.com/...rive_sounds.php

One suggestion for you for the future is to use a free HDD monitoring software such as HD Tune http://www.pcworld.c...60/hd-tune.html this will give you advanced warning of potential HDD failure

[Sking0]

Nightmare. Did it all ok. But i think the initial problem was not the hard drive now, it has something to do with my graphics i think.
For a couple of days it was all great, last night i put the MSI Radeon disc in and ran it. On the next boot the noise was back. I rolled back the drivers to the ones windows automatically installed and it was fine again. Not too bothered about having spent money on the new hard drive but i would really like to install the old one as a slave.
What is the best way to do this? As regards the graphics, i will cross that bridge later.

[phillpower2]

Fitting and setting up the HDD will not take you long but you need to check the following first;
The case has a spare HDD bay.
There is a spare SATA (or IDE) socket on the MB.
That the PSU is capable of providing adequate power to the HDD.
Has the PSU got a spare power cable for the HDD.

Check the above out and post back.

[Sking0]

Less than a year ago i got a Corsair 600watt psu and it has all the gubbins to connect, i have all the requirements.

[phillpower2]

Ok all good then

Please excuse the title of the tutorial http://www.dummies.c...vId-323033.html

If you happen to have or can borrow an external HDD enclosure you could format the HDD before you fit it into the case, this removes the risk of formatting the wrong HDD by mistake, I use DBan for a complete wipe of a HDD http://www.dban.org/

[Sking0]

Thanks. No worries about the title, i have seen and read lots of stuff by those info providers

http://compare.ebay....type=pla&crdt=0

I have something similar to this which i use to get stuff from old hard drives. I can use that to format can't i??

Edited by Sking0, 12 March 2013 - 08:20 AM.

[Wolfeymole]

I'd hesitate to use DBan as it can wipe all drives present.

If you fit the drive on any sata connection other than the primary boot connection then it will not be regard as a bootable drive Sking and you can format it via Disk Management in Admin Tools.

By the way that connector is like mine but more expensive.

http://www.amazon.co...e/dp/B001A5SK56

[Sking0]

It's like mine too but more expensive too, i have an Iomax one.