Hello all,

**Some of my questions may seem remedial, apologies, but I am an amatuer and I'm also stuck. And, I apologize for the length of my rant/inquiry. Thanks in advance if you have taken the time to help...it's greatly appreciated.

I recently purchased a new hard drive after my current drive started taking a cr*p on me. I currently have an ultra DMA, the drive I bought is an ATA/EIDE drive, both are maxtor-the original one is a slower speed than my new one- which is 7200 rpm.

Any problems here? - with the two different types/speeds...(they are both 60 gig...if that makes any difference).

I am having problems, (intermittent clicking when an app causes the drive to "spin?", louder running, and slow speed...also crashing where there was none before)-in addition...I was getting some smart failure notices before I more recently reformatted my hard drive, but now, even though I am not getting those smart errors, I am still having some of the same problems.

I have been told by more than a few people that I should probably replace it, though some have told me that reformatting might fix some demagnitized areas of the hard drive, or something like that. **Any truth here? After totally reformatting (erasing everything and starting as new with the restore disks), the problems with crashing and slow speed went away, for about a month, but the clicking noises and such continued. All worsened when I started using the computer more again...adding programs, using new apps, etc. (I do defrag, scan disk, etc. regularly).

I have run defrag and scan disk several times since then with no improvments.

Because I have purchased the drive already, I am intent on installing it, even if my original isn't faulty.

My main question is...

***I am hoping that when I install the new drive, I can put my operating system on it from the set of restore/application recovery disks that came with my computer when I bought it.

Is this possible? -I am running Windows ME on a 1.2g athlon, HP pavilion 8870.

I am concerned that maybe some corrupt data or possible virus or something is the cause of my problems...In this case, I am apprehensive about copying everything from my old hd, to the new one, in fear that the problem may be transplanted. yikes.

**Is this substantiated? Or, am I being way too paranoid?

If, however, I need to copy all from my old to new...**How do I know which cable settings to use for my old hd?

If I have to copy everything from the old to new, I am thinking I may as well leave my old drive in the system as a slave or secondary non-boot drive. **How do I know what the cable settings for slave are on this drive?? I mean it is obviously set to master now, and I know, because of the manual, how to set my new drive to master or slave, etc. But, I am unsure about how to set the jumper or whatever it is called to my old drive to make it secondary...

I have noticed that cd disks are HOT to the touch after they have been in the drive for a while...**Is this normal?

My system seems hot to me, but I am unsure if it is normal or not...**Any layman descriptions of "too hot" that may help me to know if it is, in fact, too hot? ...I also don't know if it seems to be worse than in the past...

Well, I am hoping to find some help here, I just discovered this board--its really great. I have been hanging on to this brand new drive for about a month, unsure and lacking confidence.

Thanks much, Matt.

"Any problems here? - with the two different types/speeds..."

No problems at all as far as RPM is concerned. However if they have different ATA speeds (33 and 66 for example) you should put them on separate IDE cables. If you put them both one one cable they will both run at the speed of the slowest drive.

Another thing, make sure that the master and slave jumpers are correct. If not the drives will not operate properly if at all. You can have two drives on each IDE cable. A single drive on a cable is always set to MASTER, and if a second one is added it is set to SLAVE using the jumpers on the back. There should be a label on the drive that tells how to set it; if not you may be able to find them on the internet by searching for that model.

If the drive is making unusual noises you should probably replace it before it dies on you or starts losing data.

If you buy a new drive your system restore discs should work just fine (though if you get a different sized hard drive I'm not sure if that would be a problem or not).

Hope that helps

Thanks for the info, I really appreciate it.

Just so I have this straight...

**I bought a "Maxtor DiamondMaxPlus D740X, ultra ata/133, 60 gig, 7200 rpm, 2mb cache buffer", drive... my other is most certainly slower...it's a udma or something, couple years old.

*** If I take out the hard drive that is in my comp now, and install the new one--formatting and partitioning and everything--I can just throw in the system restore disks and re-install Win ME so that all the programs and stuff will be on there just like they were when I brought the computer home for the first time?

** Also, do I need to create a boot disk for anything?

Thanks Much, Matt.