Need help!1

hey guys. I built my computer back in July of 2007. I have a ide 80gb hard drive in it but want to upgrade to a bigger hard drive and one that is a sata hard drive. I know that my motherboard supports sata but i have no clue what to buy or do??

Heres some specs

ECS Elitegroup P4M800Pro-M Motherboard
Intel(R) Pentium(R)4 Processor CPU 3.0GHz
2.0 GB of Ram Windows XP version 2002

I really dont know what to do about getting a new hard drive.
I want a sata but see theres all kinds of different ones and they all say different thing
Help would be GREATLY appreciated.
Thanks

 

SATA drives are fairly simple to set up. Just make sure you have a spare SATA power plug and cable. On the subject of picking a drive you can't go far wrong. All SATA drives should work with your setup.

Dave!
EDIT: Another thing I should add is that if your motherboard only supports SATA150 (you will have to check that one out) speeds then you have to tell the drive to run SATA150 by setting a jumper on the back.

 

ok i just recieved a WD 250GB Sata Hard drive.

Im kinda lost on what to do now, how do i get the info off my hard drive now to the new sata drive. Also i bought a used sata drive and i need to erase everthing off of that. Then the last thing i need to do i hook up to new sata and i dont know how to go into bios and do that. How do you get to the setup screen when the comp starts

 

I'm not sure myself. I always do a clean install of Windows but there are many programs that will make an exact copy of your old hard drive.

Just reformat it. You can do this in Windows by right clicking the drive in My Computer and selecting Format. Just make sure Quick Format is unchecked as it's better to do a full format.

As your computer boots up, you sould see some small writing at the bottom of the screen telling you what button to press to enter your BIOS (I generally find it's the Delete key). Just navigate around the BIOS to change the boot order (it's generally in the first few options).

 

ok i was wondering if anyone had a step by step instruction manual for doing this. I heard copying from ide to sata can be tricky, what program should i use and i DO NOT want to reload windows.

Help please
Thanks