Ultrabay hdd adapter

[duncan]

1. I have just bought an Ultrabay hdd adapter for a T20 off ebay. It appears 'new' and says to refer to manual. There is no manual! I know it sounds daft but how do you use it? I know how to get it in and out of the machine, but as and when I get another hdd [just bought a 30 GB today on ebay - not here yet!] how does it slot in? I can see there is a black plastic flange towards the outside edge of the adapter; how does the hdd slide in to this? I have a record for pulling things in the absence of manuals - and pulling them right off or in half!
2. Having got the new 30 GB hdd in the adapter and slotted in to the T20, what do you recommend I do to install the 30 GB as the c drive and swap the existing c hdd [a measley 4 GB] for use as storage in the adapter. Do I just literally copy the entire contents of the 4 gb to the 30 gb then swap them round? Will my installation of XP still be ok? Or should I do it some other way? Many thanks. Duncan

[morgie]

Hi Duncan,

1.) Once you have the old drive out and the ultrabay adapter it should look fairly obvious. Angle the drive slightly to connect the IDE pin connections into it - hopefully it will make more sense when you have both to see. It shouldn't require any forcing, so be careful not to bend any pins. The black plastic hinge that you see should be angled up to allow you to insert the drive and then clipped down once it is in.

2.) Putting the 4gb drive in the bay and the new 30gb in the primary slot is a good idea. However, you can't simply "copy" a Windows install as you would with data files such as MP3 for example. You need to either use some disk cloning software such as Ghost, or do a fresh install of Windows XP (do you have a Windows XP install CD?). Either way I'd recommend a full format of the 30gb drive first.

Once you have the drives in this setup and an install on Windows on the new drive you will be able to copy accross any data files easily from your old drive.

I hope this advice is of some help. Good luck with it!

[duncan]

Excellent - thanks Morgie. That all looks like it shoud make sense when I have all the bits to hand. As far as swapping the drives around etc and XP, I have Ghost but have never used it. No time like the present! I also have a copy of XP, but it is only a copied copy which I asked for from the vendor when I bought the T20 with a view to upgrading the hdd. So only time will tell whether MS like the look of it all or not! Thanks again. Duncan