Format Disk?

pies

pies

New Member
Ok im looking at a pc for someone and the hard drive is insanley loud I think it may be failing if so I'm gonna throw another one in.
I'm going to try to clone it so all their stuff is saved and transfer it to the new drive(will windows still work?)
My main question is if it dosent work and I put xp on the hdd and nothing more then run the format disks will all the programs return?
thanks
-pies
 
NO! and NO! would be the likely results there. If you try cloning a drive with faling read/write heads you can't verify file integrity for one. Slaving the drive in another running case or simply to the replacement following first setting that up and seeing a clean install of Windows would be the method of then retrieving what can be saved from the first drive.

Lately when a friend saw XP locking for no reason and even the F8 boot menu items froze when choosing them the repair install attempt also got nowhere! The larger storage drive that was fortunately available saw the clean copy of Windows and later the failing drive slaved to it for rescue there.

Forget writing to that drive and missing files while folders were copied to the new primary are still being looked for. The drive had to be pulled remporarily since it pulled the entire system down there! Once the exact location and files are found say good bye to that one!
 
Ok I'll order a new drive and install xp the computer has the xp key on the back.
So the new hdd will just have windows and nothing more.
If I use the factory format disk on the new drive with only xp will the programs from the format disk work on the fresh install?
 
Once you replace a drive that saw a preinstalled OS and programs you will need a full install version or simply install an order version of Window to see an upgrade. Softwares games, apps, etc. will have to be installed fresh as well.

On a new drive you are dealing with a totally new system registry as well as new Windows, DocumentsandSettings, and Program Files directories there. The idea now is to simply see the system up and running again if you are dealing with a failed drive. That means starting over fresh while trying to save what you can from a drive now failing on you.

If you are hearing loud clicking sounds that would be the heads in the drive going fast. If those should go before you can slave the drive or create some type of disk image you would need to see it go to a data recovery service where they can open it up under controlled circumstances and read the drive's platters directly for data retrieval. That is a little pricey at times however!
 
Thanks
I'll see if there's anything they need off the drive if not I wont worry about recovery.
 
Sometime later this month I'll be taking a 5gb drive out of an older Dell since there's no space for the basic games some parents only want to see on the gift from an aunt there. They thought the idea of an 80gb still seeing 98 however was a great idea when finding out you can get that size cheap these days. Try about $43+shipping at newegg or another vendor.

For that being an older Fat32 version of Windows the partitioning will require WD's own DrFat32.exe tool to get past the 64gb barrier seen with the updated version of FDisk there in order to see the full use of the drive with a single primary. Drivers?

The original cd contains board drivers or a need to download from Dell. That will be one thing you mat want to look at as well when installing the replacement drive there.
 
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