Adding second hard drive

[Surge1243]

Hi, I just had a quick question on adding a second hard drive to my system. I currently have a 20 GB 7200 rpm IBM hard drive installed in my system and am looking to add a 60 GB 7200 rpm Western Digital hard drive. I was just wondering on the overall process of adding the hard drive. Do I simply install the drive as a slave to my other one, fdisk and format it, then install the OS on it. I'm currently running WinXP Pro on my other drive...Thanks a lot!

[Zinedene]

HI,

Personally, I would keep the 20GB as the main HD and use the (new60Gb) secondary as my slave.
Keeping the OS on the original existing drive, and using the new one for other stuff.
Only one of the hard drives need to have the OSystem on it, so it can boot from it.
Adding a second hard drive is as easy as u say. Its just a case of selecting the right jumper setting on the HD, and connecting the cable, and giving it power!

If you keep the OS on the 20GB HDD, then if you ever ran into serious problems and lost all your data, you would only loose 20GB rather than 60GB. 20GB is more than enough for any Operating system, and applications you would want on there.

You would have to fdisk it, and format it anyways, so the PC could use it. I think XP might actually do that 4 u, but im not sure, as Im not on XP, im using Win2000.

Im sure more responses wil fly in soon enuff!

Hope that helps a bit


Zinedene

[oosik]

set the 20gb jumper to master on the end of the ide cable
set the 60gb jumper to slave on the middle connector

power on
go to explorer
right click on 60gb hdd
select "format.....", I believe at this point it will partition it also and ask for partition and file system settings.

I have xp pro and do it slightly differently than xp home.

maybe someone with xp home edition can clarify this point.

[pillainp]

Hi,

By the way, Windows 2K will also partition and format the HDD for you. Its under Start Menu> Programs>Administrative Tools>Computer Management>Disk Manager. YOu have to be logged in as administrator to do this.

As for adding a second drive, just like Zinedene said. Also go to Standard BIOS Setings in BIOS and enable detection of the second drive (set to auto if you do not know the CHS data, andset mode to LBA). Also under Advanced Settings (BIOS), set HDD 0 (Primary Master HDD on IDE 1) as first boot device.

NPP

[glc]

If you are using 80 wire Ultra IDE cables (the ones with the blue/gray/black connectors) you use Cable Select jumpering, not master/slave. Blue to motherboard, black to master, gray to slave. Just slap the new drive in and use disk manager in XP to partition and format it.

[Surge1243]

Ok, great, thanks a lot!!!

[Tuf]

Of course if the drive offers more performance than the old drive you won't gain the added speed if the OS is on the old drive.