Installing a hard drive onto a xp box

[pothead]

im not much of a hardware guy so please bare with the question if it sounds stupid....how hard is it to install a hard drive onto xp, someone told me all you need to do is just set the hard drive to slave and plug it in and xp does the rest automattically , is that true ? Any info would be helpful.

Thanks,

The Pothead

[HAL9000]

Well... pretty close. Once you've done the physical installation, boot to XP. Go into Disk Administrator by right clicking on My Computer and going to Manage. From there you can partition and format the new drive.

[Confused]

Well depending on what IDE channel or type of PC can determine how it is jumpered. If it is a newer system and not a proprietary PC like HP, Compaq, Gateway ect.

Anyway generally if it is a newer system and you are putting it on IDE1 with a existing drive and the channel has the 80 wire IDE cable, then you would set it to CS and put it on the grey connector with your existing drive set to CS on the black connector.

If putting on IDE2, it could be master or slave depending what is currently there.

Sometimes proprietary PC have their own jumpering schemes.
What kind of PC and what kind of drive do you have?
Chas

[pothead]

hal9000: dude i just got a dell , so yeah its a dell. Havent actually received it yet its still being built so i cant give you much more info than that. Im sure its not to hard im just a little nervous because i have NEVER done any kind of internal installation on a computer before. Basically from what ive been hearing from other people is i just have to set it to slave (if i want it to be the slave of course) then boot xp and go into disk manager or some **** like that. Any extra info to make it easier on me is allways appreciated.

Thanks,
The Pothead

[minsonngo]

It is not that hard. I was worried the first time I opened up my computer. But being worried does not help at all. Just be careful. All you have to do is make sure that the hard drive already present in the machine is set as Master. The majority of store bought machines have their hard drive set as Cable Select. So all you need to do is rejumper it to master and then that is fine. Next jumper the hard drive that you are going to add as Slave and put it on the same IDE Cable or Channel as the Master hard drive. Connect the power cable to it and your almost set to go. Now all you need to do is partition and format it and your done.

[ZANEY123]

be careful not to void the warr on the dell, i don't know if adding the HD might void the warr check with dell first just in case.

Zaney123