The first thing is wether or not this hard drive is going to be an addition to an existing system (A) or if it is to be installed by itself (B). The A and B parts of the steps will deal with this.
1. Turn off the computer and disconnect all cables but the power cable.
2. Remove the case covering. Some cases have screw(s), others don't. Just look at the back/side of your case and try to figure it out.
3A. Locate the current hard drive. It will most likely be in a "cage" with a ribbon cable and a 4 wire power cable connected to it.
3B. Look for the hard drive cage. It will be below the CD-ROM and floppy drives.
4. Remove the hard drive cage from the case. It will be held in by either a screw or a lever that will be easily visible.
5A. The new hard disk will need to be set to "slave". It will come with the default setting of master. To change the setting look on the back of the drive, where all the pins are, and find the jumpers. The jumper setting for slave should be either on the lable on the drive or in the manual. Remove the jumper from the pins and set it in the correct position on the drive for slave.
6. Place the hard drive in an empty part of the cage, line up the holes in the drive with the holes in the cage, and secure it on one, or both, sides with the screws provided.
7. Place the drive cage back in the case and secure it down.
8A. Take the empty connector on the ribbon cable that is connected to the first hard drive and connect it to the new hard drive, it should only go on one way. Then connect an available power cable to the hard drive, it will only connect in one way.
8B. Take the cable supplied with the hard drive and connect it to the #1 IDE connector on the motherboard. Make sure the red wire is on the side with the first pin and the other two connectors on the wire are on the other end away from the motherboard. Then connect the connector on the end of the cable to the hard drive. Connect an available power cable to the hard drive.
9. Close the case back up and secure it so that it doesn't come open, just do the opposite of what you did when you open the case.
10. Connect all cables back on the computer.
After all this, you need to prepare the hard drive for use. It can be done within Windows XP if this hard drive is a secondary drive. However, if you are preping the new drive for use on its own than follow these other steps.
1. Start the computer up and insert the Windows XP CD into the cd drive. The computer should start into Windows XP setup. 2. If it doesn't than go into your computers BIOS and look for the Boot Devices order and move the CD drive to the top of the list. Then reboot.
3. Windows setup will ask you to format the drive. Just say yes and all will be done.
