adding a second hard drive info requested

[achn2b]

i'm looking to add a second hard drive to my system to store audio and picture files on, and just need some general advice. i'm not new to computers, but have never partitioned a drive, or worked inside my case, not really sure how making an image of your drive wrks, etc., and just want to be clear on a few things. i can follow tutorials or instructions fairly well, so i'm pretty certain i could add the new drive myself ok, but just need help on how best to do it.

what i want to do is make two partitions on the old drive, one just for the OS, the other for all my program and data files, reserving the second drive solely for audio and oicture stoirage, possibly for keeping games on as well. i'm assuming that if i did this, and my system ever got so screwed up that i'd need to reformat, all i'd need to do would be to wipe that partition and just re-install the OS, and all my data and programs would be unaffected. or is there more to it than that? can you re-format individual partitions, or do you need to do the whole drive?

to that end, can i copy and paste all my files on the old drive over to the new one, format the old drive, partition it, and then re-install the OS? if not, what is the best way to go about doing this, preferably without having to buy any third party software like partition magic.

[-FalconFan-]

Excellent HardDrive resource here....

http://www.pcmech.com/hdindex.htm

[Cricket]

What OS are you working with?

Post your system specs.

Do you have Ghost or Drive Image?

Cricket

[achn2b]

pentium III 500 mhz
windows 98.

i don't have ghost or drive image, i do have a cd burner and backupmypc that i can use to make backups with.

i'm pretty sure that i could just copy and past data or existing files over to the new drive, but i figure programs wouldn't, cause the computer would be looking for them on the C drive, when they'd now be on another.

if it's too difficult, i'll just leave my programs and OS on the older drive, and just use the new one for what i want it for. but i'd love to be able to put the OS on it's own partition, just for the ease of restoring it if something goes wrong, or simply to wipe and put a clean install on occasionally.

[achn2b]

actually, i checked and i can create a disc image with my cd burning program. could i then save that to the other hard drive? but then how do i restore the image?