Computer Help

[GAC]

My sister has a Gateway Essential 700c Desktop computer. it's around 4 years old.

The power supply went out of it, and I found/ordered a new one.

She also told me that the hard drive was failing, so I thought I'd try to find another one for her.

It currently has a 10G Western Digital WD100EB-11BHFO Protege IDE hard drive.

I want to get her a bigger one since the 10 G doesn't even come close to providing her with enough storage for all the pics she saves. I thought I'd try to find a 40G for her.

I want to be cost effective, and really don't want to invest alot in trying to save/extend this computer.

I got the power supply for $35.

Any help would be appreciated in trying to find a compatible, yet larger HD that would work.

I'm also gonna have to bump up her SD Ram too. She only has 64 MD PC133.

My sister is not too computer savy at all.

[oneupper]

GAC,

I'm not a computer guy...but I've bought and sold stuff.

IMO...get a new one, sell or donate this one.
You can get a new entry level PC w/o monitor for $300 these days. Its going to be faster, with more memory and a larger hard drive and you won't have to fiddle around.

Sure you could fix this one up with a 40 GB hard drive and 256 RAM for maybe...$80-$100...but what for?

Install that power supply since you already paid for it and donate/sell it..you will be lucky to get $50.

Hope that helps...

[GAC]

That is an option; but I also like to tinker (learn) by working on computers. And this is a great opportunity for me to do that.

If I can get a bigger HD for around $40, plus the $35 for the PS, and do the labor myself, then it would be worth the time.

If it doesn't work out, then not too much was invested.

But we are looking at getting her a Dell.

[ghettochild]

http://froogle.google.com/froogle?q=120GB+IDE&btnG=Search+Froogle&lmode=online&lnk=pruser&price1=0.00&price2=50&btnP=Go
http://froogle.google.com/froogle?btnG=Search&q=256MB+PC133

[KronoRed]

I'm all for tinkering but this system isn't worth it.

Build her a new one :)

[Nugget]

The computer is like the KC Royals it needs to be put on the scrap heap and move on.

However, if you were in Australia I would suggest going and checking out the yard sales or even the council clean ups as you could see similar computers and stuff for free. The other point is you may have to search a fair bit for compatible memory. Essentially any harddrive can be used as long as it fits into the the box.

[GAC]

You gys are probably right. But I at least want to get it up and running with a new PS so I can get the pics she has stored on it.

Then I may dump it.

I get a Honda discount on any Dell. ;)

[wolfboy]

You gys are probably right. But I at least want to get it up and running with a new PS so I can get the pics she has stored on it.

Then I may dump it.

I get a Honda discount on any Dell. ;)

GAC,
You can still recover those pics fairly easily, even if you don't get the other computer up and running. I was trying to explain it in chat, but I don't know if I explained it well enough. First, if you get a new computer for her, it has to be an ATA type setup for the hard drives. Her current computer should be running on this setup, so that shouldn't be an issue.

I had an old HP with a lot of music on the HD, and I wanted to transfer it to my XP machine. I figured a flash drive might be the best option, but the HP machine ran Windows 98 (not compatible with anything). So, I just plugged it into my current machine. On an ATA setup, you have a cable connected to your hard drive. The current hard drive is the "master". Once you extract the old hard drive, change the designation to "slave", connect it to the slave end of the ATA cable, and give it a power cable. Boot the PC back up, and it should show up as a separate drive. My old HP HD is (J:). Once the slave drive is connected, you can easily move any pictures, etc... to the (C:) drive. That is my recommendation.

Should you decide to go with a new hard drive, I think you might encounter some difficulty. ME is an OS that I'm not terribly familiar with. It's a bit dated, so your partition and format process isn't likely to be as smooth as it is on XP. This is about the best link I could find on a partition/format for an ME installation. http://kb.iu.edu/data/aema.html
Best of luck with this. The option I suggested earlier should be much easier. If you need clarification, just PM me. It was extremely easy to do on my XP machine.

[wolfboy]

I'm all for tinkering but this system isn't worth it.

Build her a new one :)

Sound advice. Unless that Dell discount is out of this world, I'd build it yourself. Much more fun, and much more cost effective.

[captainmorgan07]

i'd get this one owrking then buy a new one then sell the old one after u got what u needed off of it what i did

[Nugget]

Ugh Dell - If you can afford it or can get a discount from hp I'd go with them. As for wolfboy's explanation its one way to go with retrieving information off the hard drive. The thing to look at is also with the new computer, some are being shipped with sealed cabling which makes it much harder to add slave drives.

Another suggestion is if there is enough room in the existing box to hook up the old drive with the new drive so you wouldn't have to transfer plus you get the 10GB anyway. Once and if you get a new PC just laplink the two and cannibalise the material that way.

[GAC]

Sound advice. Unless that Dell discount is out of this world, I'd build it yourself. Much more fun, and much more cost effective.

I've never built a computer in my life though. :lol:

I've learned to do the basic stuff (enough to keep my head out of water).

I can get a pretty good discount (by being a Honda associate) on a Dell system. That is probably the route I am going.

I'm going to get this power supply in the next day or so. So I am gonna slap it in and then recover the pics. I'll probably order her a new system while the other one continues to run for a bit.

I've always had very good luck with HP. This one I'm on is my second (the first one didn't survive the house fire ;) ), and I love it!

I just bought my son a Dell laptop.