Adding HD to old mobo

[Spaterdave]

I don't know anything about adding hard drives besides the primary one. i want to add an extra 20 gig to an old comp just for fun. the old mobo only had two drive slots, the hard drive and the cd drive are already using them up. can i just take out the cd drive and plug in the hard drive and be done? or do i need to install something onto the comp? what should i do?

[doctorgonzo]

When you say slots, are you talking about physical slots to put the drive into? Unused connectors on the IDE cables? IDE connectors on the mobo?

With two IDE channels, you can have up to four drives. If there is no physical space in the case, that really isn't a big deal.

[Spaterdave]

there are 2 of those little black rectangles with lots of little spikes in them on the mobo lol. how do i get another hard drive in there for that???

[glc]

Your cables should have 3 connectors - one on each end and one in the middle. You can put 2 drives on 1 cable, one will be master and the other will be slave. Master and slave are set with jumpers on the drives

[gbirke]

How old is the old computer? If it is old enough it will not see the full 20 gig.

[Spaterdave]

not too old, 98-99 gateway

[Spaterdave]

How do i remove the OS and everything else from this damn hard drive so i can make it the slave????

[kilgoretrout]

It's not necessary to remove anything before slaving the 20GB drive. Just do it and windows will recognize the drive and assign it a drive letter. Then you can delete any files you want or even reformat the drive by right clicking on the drive in My Computer and selecting the format option. That will wipe everything off the drive.

[Spaterdave]

i tried just attaching it and running but that caused my comp to crash, so i'm just gonna put it on the other comp, format it and then put it into this comp.