swapping hard drives?

[midzt]

Hey guys, basically i am getting an 80gb hard drive to replace one of my 40gb ones. But im not sure how i would copy the stuff from the 40 to the 80 cos i don't have another cable bit free to plug it in. The one im replacing is not the one with windows tho, its just stuff ive got like music, software etc. But i would like to keep all of it.

Any suggestions?

[nichomach]

I assume that the drives in your machine are all hanging off the IDE ports? Is that correct? How many do you have please? If you've got a LOT and you don't want to unplug any of them, you could always get a PCI disk controller card (I assume your drives are IDE, therefore an ATA133 controller) and mount the additional drive via that. In fact, that would mean you could still keep the old drive in the machine if you wanted http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...ilterKeywords= .

[turkster]

When you say 'cable bits' do you mean EIDE plugs on the cable (there should be two plugs on the cable in addition to the one plugged into the mobo)?

If you have any free plugs you could just plug it into that (make sure you set the jumpers correct; master if you use the plug at the end of the cable or slave if you have it on the plug closer to the mobo).

Otherwise just temporarily disconnect an optical drive and plug in the hardrive instead while you copy the stuff across. This shouldnt cause any problems.

[midzt]

O yeh, never thought of that turskter. CHeers. Sorry bout the very poor desrciption about the 'cable bits' Yeh, i fink ill just unplug one of my optcial drives. Will the drive letter still be correct tho? For exmaple my HD now is g: and if i plug another in say it will be h: but once i remove the old and swap it for the new one, will it be g: or stay as h:?

[mike_w]

Assuming you have you have 2000 or XP, its fairly easy to change about the optical drive letters to your heart's content.

[nichomach]

As mike says; under Administrative Tools, Computer Management, Storage, Disk Management.