Another computer question - hard drives

Freak me - are Watford still going? I bought a PC from them in 1992, and got royally ripped off. I'd paid for a games bundle that never arrived, an "upgraded" monitor, which turned out to have a very annoying high pitched (but nowhere near ultrasound - probably around 8000hz!) whine, and the box the PC was in turned up damaged, with no mains lead, and obviously second user (from a return).

At least the PC worked (and the case/PSU is STILL in daily use - lhatkins knows the owner!). Henryt had the misfortune to buy from Multiplex at the same rough time as me, and his PC was half-DOA (kept crashing). He sent it back, the company went bust, and he was £1000 down.

I had some "issues" with Ebuyer when I got all my stuff - their system had gone out of sync and for some reason my card kept getting declined. Never EVER try to phone them - I had to, and nearly had a nervous breakdown! At least the bits (touch wood) are all working fine - although I'd like to know why my PC takes soooo looooong to boot (probably needs a fresh install - which WILL happen ).

 

Oh yes! Absolute shower this lot. I am fortunate never to have dealt with Watford. I was considering it but a mate of mine got there first
He bought a PC from them. Half of the stuff that was supposed to be included with it never turned up. What did turn up wasn't installed properly so it didn't work. Some of the drivers weren't sent so it wasn't even possible to put it right. It took weeks of progressivley more heated phone calls before most of it was sorted out but there was at least one part that he never ever got (I forget what it was). He gave up and bought the part somewhere else.

 

I've used Aria and Microdirect on a number of occasions without any problems. Delivery is fast and the people are helpful. I would definitely recommend them.

We use Dabs all the time at work and have had a very few problems, but I don't find them particularly good for support issues.

I haven't personally had any problems with ebuyer, but know some people who have.

I avoid Scan as much as possible after we had some major problems with them at work a few years back - orders delivered to the wrong address, wrong equipment, used equipment, broken equipment. On one occasion they shipped a PC system to us that would fail after a minute or so and smelled like something was burning. When we opened the case we found it was packed solid with bubblewrap! They may be better now, but once you have a bad experience, it's hard to go back there.

Heath

 

I buy PC parts in Akihabara

 

OK,

So I got the new hard drive (80gb) and put it in as a secondary drive in the PC. Booted up and for some reason windows does not assign a drive letter, so I cant format the drive. In the device manager it recognises the second drive and says it is working properly, but I cant do anything with it. In the bios the bios recognises the drive and displays the capacity correctly.

I tried using the hd clone utility to clone everything from the old to the new drive. That worked up to a point, and I can boot up with the new drive, but it only displays the capacity as 20 gb (the same as the old drive) and not 80gb.

What gives?

Cheers, Robbo

 

What is a drive letter? Doesn't it just appear in your 'my computer' bit?

 

Well it would. When you clone a disk you clone ALL of the disc including the partition table so Windows will read this and think it is a 20 GB disk.

 

So how do I get it to recognise its an 80GB disk then?

 

No.

 

robbo,
right click 'my computer'
left click manage
you should see your new drive in the drive list.
your should be able to right click it and either format it or initialise it as fat 32 or ntfs. can't remember which needs to be done first.
hope that helps
cheers


julian

 

Julian,

before I cloned the drive, it was not registering in my computer so I couldnt format it. After I cloned the old drive, the new one only reads 20GB capacity but at least it shows up in my computer. I can right click and format but it still only shows 20GB capacity.

 

Robbo - what Julian is talking about is a little different. It's not just opening "My Computer" because you're right, an unformatted drive would not show up there. If you right click (not left click as Julian said ) on "My Computer" choose the "Manage" option from the context menu. That will bring up the Computer Management app which is a lower level view of everything than Windows normally gives you. Below Storage on the tree on the left you have Disk Management. Click on that and you get to see all your physical drives and how the space on them has been allocated into partitions etc.

If you hadn't cloned your first drive you'd have been able to format it from there as an 80Gb drive. You should still (in theory) be able to create a 2nd partition out of the remaining space. Provided you're not booting from that drive it shouldn't cause a problem but having two partitions is a bit messy.

I'm not quite sure what you want to use the new drive for (haven't read the whole thread) but what I would suggest as the next step depends on that.

Michael.

 

ah,
hadn't read the cloning bit. that was probalby a bad idea - the manage / disk management section should have a bit at the bottom saying disk 0 (or something) and then all the partitions on that drive - for all physical drives. is there an unformatted section on your new drive?
if not i'm stumped - the only thing i can think of then is to delete all traces of anything you've done to it and return it under any pretext you can and get another one. then don't clone the drive but install it using the manager. maybe someone wiser in these things than i can help?
cheers


julian


michael - i did say right click - then left click on manage from the drop down that appears....
cheers (again)


julian

 

Sorry Julian - you're right, you did say right click. Reading too fast :shame:

Michael.

 

no problems. must admit i encountered similar frustration to robbo when instaqlling my 1st hdd it took me about an hour searching on the net to find that little 2 click combo.
cheers


julian

 

I'm using Win98SE. The manage feature does not seem to exist.

This drive is to replace my current one which is becoming unreliable/making strange noises. I might just re-clone it and put up with the fact that it is no bigger than the current one. I just want a PC that works reliably. It was only £30 in any case.

Thanks anyway,

Neil

 

neil,
sorry i didn't realise you were using 98
have a go at this...
http://www.pctechguide.com/tutorials/HardDrive_Partition.htm
cheers



julian

 

Robbo

About a year ago, my PC was almost useless. It took 10 minutes to load up and even removing cookies was a five minute effort. It was impossible to retrieve a file and everyone said the disk had gone.

I installed a Norton Disk Doctor and within 15 minutes it had cured everything.

May be worth a try.

Mick

 

Robbo is yer original drive still intact?

I may be talking pish I'm just up, but start thw comp with a win 98 boot floppy, and then FDISK the drive (google it) this will place partitions(s) on the new disk, I would keep the original drive as C or reformat new drive as C(this needs a reinstal but your comp will be better for it, nothing like a reformat for blowing out the cobwebs.

If I have misread any of this and am talking bullshit then I appologise.

Ps just seen Ju's link to info on vary same subject, God I need another espresso.

 

Sorry Robbo - didn't realise you were using Win98, thought you were on XP. Julians link has the info about using FDISK. Just be warned that fdisk, if you use it on your boot drive, can make your system unbootable. Use with care

Michael.