no hard drive?

Question

thinking about buying a pc from police auction. only its missing hard drive. Its a {dell optiplex gx240 desktop intel pentium 4 1.70 ghz processor... 256 mb of ram.. would it be that hard to install a hard drive

Answer 1

no, installing a hard drive is fairly easy. But don't forget that new drives come blank and you'd need to purchase a copy of Windows, so figure that into the cost of the PC.

Answer 2

Installing a hard drive is really easy. Its just a matter of plugging in plugs that fit together. You can get a great hard drive for a great deal off tigerdirect.com. This site is great. Get a Seagate or Western Digital (WD) hard drive. They are the best. for under $100 bucks you can get a good amount of gigs. You may even want to upgrade your ram (you said 256 mb, update it to 512mb for about $50. Its definitely worth the investment if you are on a budget. THe site also shows you step by step instructions on how to install the hard drive ( with pictures too).

Answer 3

Its pretty easy. The cables usually come with the hard drive, unless you buy one second hand. Since the HD will be blank, you need an OS, but make sure your computer has a CD drive in it, or you will be hosed, unless you have an OS on floppie, then you will be hosed if the computer doesn't have a floppie.
Also, make sure you put the hard drive on IDE 0, the cd rom might be on that as well, but you have to make sure the hard drive is set up for primary, and the cd rom as a secondary. If the CD rom is on IDE 1, then it won't matter.
The hard drive might come with a disk, you will only need that if the computer doesn't recognixe the full capacity of the hard drive itself. That can be a headache.

Answer 4

No it shouldn't be too much of a problem... The dell desktops have special connectors... make sure you have those on the computer.. Installing a hard drive is pretty simple.. Here's a link to the support documents for the gx240. You should download and read the manuals and also download the drivers for the computer.

http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/product_support/en/product_support_central?

Answer 5

It should not be difficult at all. You just bolt 'em in, plug it up start up the bios config. Some ide drives have little jumper blocks that may need to be changed, but usually this is only necessary if the drive is the second harddrive in the computer. Most computers can auto configure a hard drive, but you may need to go into the bios setup screen beofre it will.
Then you will need to install the OS ( Windows, Linux, BSD, DOS or whatever ) before you can use it

Answer 6

You will need to get a hard drive and on operating system if you do not already have one.
To install it you just need to open your PC and hook it in there. Plug in the cables and close the case. You should be good to go. You then only have to install the operating system.

Answer 7

Installing a hard hard is very easy. You just need to connect the power supply and the controller (flat, ribbon like cable) to it.

Answer 8

Hard drives are very easy to install, however as you would have to buy the drive, then windows, then all the other programs you need, I wouldnt advise getting that computer unless its VERY cheap. Those other parts are rather poor...

Answer 9

Its pretty easy.. Just do a yahoo or google search for a guide. If there is a CD rom drive in it you shouldnt need any extra cables.

Answer 10

No, you only need to buy a HD then plug the power cord and a cord connecting to motherboard, the cables are unique, so you wont go wrong when plug it.