How do I complete the installation of a replacement new hard drive? Such as formatting.?

Question

This is in a Fujitsu laptop. I still have the old drive and a external case to transfer the files, but something, like formatting is preventing a direct transfer.

Answer 1

1. Partition the drive (use Fdisk or drive management (right click on my Computer and select manage))
2. Reboot
3. Format the partitions created use drive management (right click on my Computer and select manage)
4. Use

Answer 2

Without the old hard drive attached, you will need to put the laptop with the Windows XP (or the Recovery CD) in the CD drive. It should start the Windows install. Let it do the complete Windows install. Once done, you will be able to attach the old drive externally and transfer over any data files you need.

You can NOT transfer Windows itself from the old drive to the new one. Nor can you transfer (most) programs. Those will need to be installed from the original CDs onto the new drive. You can transfer things like your music, videos, pictures, documents, etc.

Most of the things that you will need to tranfer between the two drives will be found in the "documents and settings" directory of the old drive. There will be a directory for each ID used on the computer. You will want to recreate each of those IDs on the new computer, and then transfer the information from the old directory for that ID to the new one.

Answer 3

If this is a new drive and replaces the old drive, you will have to boot your laptop with the Windows CD or recovery disk that came with your laptop. A recovery disk usually makes things pretty easy for the user and walks you through the installation of Windows (and formatting the drive.) If you just have the plain Windows XP CD then you need to boot to the CD, create a partition and format the drive. I recommend you format with NTFS and NOT FAT32.

Good luck!

Answer 4

You need to reinstall the OS on that new drive. Formatting is part of the reinstallation process. You would need Microsoft's assistance so that the license of the OS could be carried over to your new hard drive.