OEM Hard Drives, and how to get them working

stopgap

I am looking to get a new hard drive to replace the one which is wending it's random way to the garbage, and I am wondering, can someone explain to me how to get windows installed on a hard drive which is going to be shipped from newegg or tiger. The stores make a big deal of NOT having anything but the drive, I have cables and a mount, what else should I be worrying about?

P.S - This will be a sata drive, anything from 500 gb to 1 tb, but not expensive. any suggestions are welcome.

psychotix

stopgap wrote: »

I am looking to get a new hard drive to replace the one which is wending it's random way to the garbage, and I am wondering, can someone explain to me how to get windows installed on a hard drive which is going to be shipped from newegg or tiger. The stores make a big deal of NOT having anything but the drive, I have cables and a mount, what else should I be worrying about?

P.S - This will be a sata drive, anything from 500 gb to 1 tb, but not expensive. any suggestions are welcome.

Plug in and go, OEM means nothing. Depending on the OS you might need to update the SP and use a utility you get from their site to see the full size, but it's plug and play.

wunderbar

You'll need to format the drive first before you'll be able to see it in my computer, you can find out how to format a drive in windows by asking google, and clicking on any one of the eleventy million hits that will come up.

stopgap

I only mention because I need to Install XP on it, and then do the clean install to win 7. will i need to do anything before getting XP installed?

Bionic Monkey

stopgap wrote: »

I only mention because I need to Install XP on it, and then do the clean install to win 7. will i need to do anything before getting XP installed?

If you know how to switch the boot order in BIOS, then no. Plug it in, boot up the XP installation, and from there, you can partition and format the drive as you see fit.

Satsumomo

Some drives need to be "Initialized". I don't remember the exact steps, but it's something along the lines of:

Right Click on 'My PC' ('Computer' on Vista/Win7) -> Click on 'Manage' -> Go to Storage - Disk Management

Once there, you'll see a list of drives connected to your computer on the bottom of the window. If your drive is not initialized, it will appear as 'Not initialized'.

This is where I may be wrong
Right Click on the square with the drive's name and choose "Initialize". After it does so, I believe it prompts you to format the disk.

You could just google 'initialize disk' and get proper instructions!

PeregrineFalcon

stopgap wrote: »

I only mention because I need to Install XP on it, and then do the clean install to win 7. will i need to do anything before getting XP installed?

If it's a SATA drive, you will likely need to slipstream the SATA drivers into the XP installation disc, or put them on floppy (right, like anyone seriously still uses these :P) and load them during setup, otherwise the drive won't be recognized.