The new hard drive.... the installation story

If you've been following the comments you'll already know a few things..

1 - i survived the wait
2 - ups.com and the live rep couldn't get on the same page.. the site said delviery yesterday, but never showed it on a truck and out for delivery. The live rep said there was an error and it was due in today, Tuesday. Not a big difference, but I was happy to see it on my doorstep last night, lol.
3- duh! I ordered the drive with the newer connection.. SATA instead of IDE. I figured this out on Saturday and picked up an adapter last night.

I tried to install last night but wasn't focusing properly and said it was better to wait till today. The adapter is in and I now need to learn about RAID as it keeps giving me a start page for settings. Not touching that until I know what I'm doing. Which is what I was advised by the computer person I go to locally when I need to.

I remembered this morning that I had to install something from Western Digital (hard drive brand) and that program was what made the installation a breeze. I downloaded and installed it a little while ago.

To be smarter today and on the safe side I'm copying all my photos onto a flash drive ... just in case. I have a picture file of 3.79G to fit onto a 4G flash drive. Hopefully I'll be able to squueze them on. That should be done by 3pm latest. Then I'll shut down and try to install again. With luck on my side I'll be able to install the drive with ease this time. It took the work computer an hour or so and I'm hopinh to report full success by 5pm today.

cross your usb cables for me :)

Update 4:27pm - I have successfully installed the new hard drive!. The old one is still in here, and I guess I'll need to eventually reformat that one to use as a back up disk. Or I may take it to work and use it in a computer that needs help there.

When I replaced the hard drive at work a few weeks ago it was my first attempt. I had pages and pages of instructions complete with pics that I'd found on the internet. I bought that hard drive based on a great sale price. It was also a Western Digital. After much hair pulling I went to their website for help and found the downloads that pretty much do all the work for you. That's why I was insistent on getting another Western Digital for home. Maybe all brands do this, but this company won me over with how easy it was to copy to the new drive. All I had to do was run the Data Lifeguard Tools that I downloaded from their site and it the rest was a matter of simple clicks and waiting for the hard drive to work. Last night I wasn't thinking clearly and forgot about the download. Oh and one other thing that made this drive nice was that since its a SATA hard drive it doesn't have to be installed while it's lying flat. Which is a good thing since I didn't have room to lie it on my computer and had it on end while it did all the work. There seems to be a bit of lag time, but I'm sure it will all work out in the end. I now have enough room to do the program updates I've been afraid to do.. plus the copying of DVD's which was prevented from not having enough room on the other hard drive. Yay!!!