PC Upgrade

So I decided it was time to upgrade my computer. A long time ago this was a straightforward process…way before Windows. Now, Windows really binds itself to your hardware and has all these internal hidden files. The process is tougher today, but supposedly still doable.

I bought a new motherboard, CPU, hard disk, and memory. 2 Gig of Ram as opposed to 512Meg before. The hard disk is twice the storage of the old one. There is a process called “cloning” which allows you to copy all the data from an old drive onto a new one, byte by byte so that the contents are identical, except that the bigger one will have a lot of free storage when done. That software was a download from the manufacturer’s site.

The new hard drive is a “SATA” and the old is “IDE”. My old motherboard does not have connections for SATA, though the new one has connections for both. Unfortunately the cloning needed to be done using the old motherboard. So I bought an adapter that converts SATA or IDE to a USB port. Nice, but slow. The cloning process was kicked off at about 8:30 PM Thursday and finished about 11:30 pm Friday. Yes, you read that right…27 hours I did not have to sit and watch this process.

On the weekend I set to installing the hardware. When all hooked up nothing happened. Double checked and found that I forgot to plug the power cable into the new drive. Did that and the computer still didn’t boot into Windows, though it was close. There was some hardware error. With a few hours of checking, trial and error, I decided to “punt” and install Windows fresh. That required reformatting the drive, wiping out the 27 hours of cloning. At least I still had all my old data on the old drive AND that wonderful adapter that I could hook up when everything was done.

Still had a little trouble but finally got a good install when I disabled the second processor on the CPU chip. I think I can re-enable that now, but it took me awhile to figure it out. In hind sight, that was probably what caused me to punt and reformat.

Oh well, now I have reinstalled and downloaded all the latest and greatest patches and service packs. The machine flies compared to the old. And that is running only on one core. Would like to see it with the second enabled.

My next problem was in getting to my old data. I hooked up the IDE drive to the USB adapter and found that the folders with my data were “locked up”. I had set up a user account on my old system and that protects the files. A little searching and about a half hour of doing a fix and waiting for it to be applied and now I have “taken ownership” of all the files on that drive. Thank you Microsoft Knowledge Base!!!

So, now I can leisurely copy files from the old drive to the new. Everything works and is a joy. The system is faster, quieter, and boots in 1/10th the time.

And to answer the inevitable question from my dad…no, I did not record the amount of time that I took to do this and calculate how much it would have cost due to my time being worth money. This was just hobby work.