my hard drive setup?? what kind is it?

[failurbydesign]

i kno wits hard to see, but i dont have access to a camera right now, but thats my hard drive setup, its weird, it doesnt use the cable like the cdrom uses. my question is i want to play with vista but i have a spare hard drive, would i be able to disconnect the hard drive from the pc, and connect the other hd for vista to one of my cdrw/dvdrw drives?

 

[VenomXt]

Serial ATA150

 

[LeeJend]

Yes, no problem to do what you want to do.

Looks like your HD is serial ata.
Your old drive is probably IDE.

There should be a second ide ribbon connector next to the one the cd/dvd plugs into (view is blocked in photo) . Plug a cable into there and run it to the old drive. Do not hook a HD and cd/dvd into the same ribbon cable it slows the HD down something awful.

Make sure not to boot when both the old and new hd are installed and have an OS on them. Also reformat the old drive before installing Vista.

You could also do a dual boot system off the single drive but your idea is safer.

 

[failurbydesign]

You could also do a dual boot system off the single drive but your idea is safer.

Ha yea, i was reading some stuff elsewhere and didnt seem that it went well all the time..thanks..by the way is what i have good??

 

[LeeJend]

The SATA HD. Yes, it is the latest. It is replacing IDE. Potentially faster and better air flow with the thin cables

 

[dreamliner77]

Do not hook a HD and cd/dvd into the same ribbon cable it slows the HD down something awful.

This was only a problem pre-win2k. In win2k and XP, you can have different speed devices on the same IDE chain with negative effects.

 

[failurbydesign]

so i can use a cable from my dvd drive?

 

[dreamliner77]

Yes.

 

[Mainframeguy]

yes - why not go mad and use cable select too?

you can actually do it any way that suits you - and if that was me I would just shove the extra drive in o the end of a second IDE cable... but that is just me

 

[failurbydesign]

yea well opened up the pc, disconected the hd and my dvd/cdrw drive and hooked up my hd, it took 1 hour to get 25% done...it was sooo freakn slow...so i think ill try something else..

 

[Mainframeguy]

so VISTA takes like FOUR hours to install? anyone confirm? Or you mean your drive is slow?

 

[Admiral Michael]

I installed a previous build on a VMWare and it didn't take that long. Maybe either the CD is bad and the drive is having problems reading it OR the CD drive is slow at reading period.

 

[canadian_divx]

my current vista enviroment took about 30 min to install on the laptop so i think its eaither your copy or the cd media device causing the errors, check the bios to make sure its not on a slow setting and enable 32bit transfer, and yea, just go over the things in the bios. that might help

 

[failurbydesign]

yea its weird, i wish it went faster, oh well, where can i get a hd like the main one i have..the serial ata,,i see em all the time on pricewatch.com, but they look lke all the other!