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    Installing new hard drive

    Discussion in 'Lenovo' started by furrycute, Sep 17, 2009.

  1. furrycute

    furrycute Notebook Evangelist

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    I just got a new hard drive.

    I am going to use this one as the primary hard drive.

    My question is, do I need to format this hard drive first before I do a fresh install using my recovery discs?
     
    furrycute, Sep 17, 2009
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  2. Lithus

    Lithus NBR Janitor

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    Part of the install process is formatting the HDD.
     
    Lithus, Sep 17, 2009
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  3. furrycute

    furrycute Notebook Evangelist

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    Thanks!

    Just got a Seagate 5400RPM 500GB hard drive and 4GB of RAM. Installing everything now. :D
     
    furrycute, Sep 17, 2009
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  4. furrycute

    furrycute Notebook Evangelist

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    One more question.

    Since this is a 500GB hard drive, do I need to create partitions on this new drive? How would you do it? And what would be a reasonable size for the OS and media partitions? Will creating partitions affect the Recovery partition?
     
    furrycute, Sep 17, 2009
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  5. gmoneyphatstyle

    gmoneyphatstyle Notebook Deity

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    No you don't need to. But you can if you want to.

    I use Acronis DiskDirector for partitioning. I like it cause you can change the size of the partitions without erasing them when ever you want.
    Here's a link to some free windows software that includes partitioning software.
    http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=337890

    I use 30GB, but I store all my media and documents on another partition. I have Microsoft Office installed on the C drive which takes up some space too. If you have more than one windows user that will again take up more space. I'd recommend 20GB as minimum.

    If its a new harddrive I don't see how it will have a recovery partition. Maybe your talking about a vista feature I don't know about though. I use XP
     
    gmoneyphatstyle, Sep 18, 2009
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