- 1). Remove the old hard drive it before installing the new hard drive. Do this by turning off the power to the computer, removing the side panel and unplugging both the data cable and power cord from the back of the drive. Once these have been removed, unscrew the small screws that hold the drive in its mounted area and slide the drive out carefully.
- 2). Insert the 500GB hard drive into the mounting slot. There will be small holes in the side of the drive that will line up with holes in the mounting bay. Insert hard drive screws into the holes once you've lined them up and tighten them so as to hold the hard drive in place.
- 3). Connect power and data cables to the new Maxtor 500GB hard drive. If you are using an IDE data cable (which looks similar to a ribbon that plugs into the hard drive), make use of the additional data connection on the cable if you are keeping your old hard drive as well. If you are using a SATA data cable (which is significantly smaller and in most cases red), then you will need to use one SATA cable per drive. You may need a power cord converter (which will have come with the drive) if you have a SATA drive as well.
- 4). Replace the side panel on your computer and press the "Power" button. Press the "Esc" key to enter BIOS setup to check and make sure that the computer recognizes the drive. From here you can format or partition it as desired.
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