hard drive upgrade....

[Tyler22]

me and my friend are gonna upgrade his old old computer for fun........he doesn't know anything about computers and i know a little.......i already know what kind of ram and cpu we are gonna get but i need to know alittle about hard drives........

i want to get an internal drive.........but i know it just isn't as simple as buy one and plug it in(or is it?)

is there a certain kind that i need to get? for the computeri have? if so where would i find this info?(on the old hard drive?).........and does it have to be compatable with the mother board or anything like that?or is it one size fits all kinda thing? thanks alot

 

[ribbon13]

There are compatibility issues. What's the motherboard? You could buy a cheap host adapter if nothing else. SATA ones go for $25.

 

[Tyler22]

how do i figure out which kind of mother board it is????? do i find a sticker on the mother board or can i find it on the system folder?

 

[ribbon13]

how big is the hard drive already in it? Is it a clone or a prebuilt? (Dell gateway hp or something?) What is your budget? You might be able to afford a new motherboard.

If you look at the physical board itself, there might be an indentifier of some sort.

 

[Kid Vicious]

generally the motherboard manufacturer, model, and version are printed on the board somewhere between the white pci slots.

 

[Tyler22]

ok i dont have the computer here at the moment but i will check when i get it.........it is a custom computer that my friends dad had made from a local computer store.......as for the hard drive it is like 5 gigs(lol) or somewhere around that.............and it has 32mb and a horrable cpu(in the mhz i think).......but i dont know if i could replace the mother board.....i know how to install everything except i have never done a hard drive or mother board

thanks for the replies