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Hard drive installation

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by lopezvic85

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Hello all,

I want to install a second internal hard drive in my PC for more space.

How would i go about doing this I already have the second HD. The Primary i have is a 160GB Drive and the new drive is 300gb is this a problem? can i only add an identical drive?

Do the jumper setting need to be set on the new drive? or is that not even an issue? I tired it once already i plugged in the drive and the computer saw it and i can see it in my system device manager but i cannot access the drive itself. What am i doing wrong?

5 replies

by Former member

Second hdd install:
1). Is your hdd a IDE type?. If yes then change the jumper to "slave".
If the hdd is SATA then just plug in the cables.

2). Fit the cable onto the drive.

3). Enter the BIOS, make sure the hdd is recognized. If not power down your computer and check the cables. This applies to IDE and SATA drives.

4). If ok then go into "disk management" and format the drive to NTFS format (you might need to give it a letter).
How?.
Right click on the drive and select "format" and choose "NTFS", and choose the letter for the drive.
Hope all goes well.

5). When formatted you can see the drive in "my computer" icon as "local disk".

Please post back if you have any more problems or questions.
If this information is useful, please mark as helpful. Thanks.

by shasca

Can you see it in disk manager? Does it ahev an assigned letter there?

by ---tk---

If you are using IDE, I usually set everything to CS (cable select) on the jumpers. Just makes everything easer down the road for me, mainly so I don't have to think about it. From there boot up your PC.

If its a SATA, it could be a little trickier, But first I would just plug it in and see how that goes.

Once you are in the Windows, Right Click "My Computer", click "Manage", and at the bottom you should see Disk Management. Once thats open you should see all your storage devices. Disk 0 is actually your OS. Disk1 will be the second drive that is installed. Right Click where it says "Free Space", choose format, and follow the instructions. I recommend partitioning the entire thing, using NTFS. Because NTFS can only utilize X logical drives. I think its 4 I don't remember off hand.

If you are using SATA and you don't see the drive in Disk Management, then you are going to have to jump into the BIOS and make some config. changes. Someone or I can help out with that, if you want.

**While your at it, once you are done installing the drive. You might want to move your PageFile over to the other drive. It will help with performance!

by oh smeg

So you can use it. To format a New HDD open Device Manager then Drive Management and right click on the Drive, in the drop down menu left click on Format or if you get a Pop up instruct the system to Prepare the HDD and then format. Y9u prepare the drive by accepting the directions in the pop up window and follow the directions.

If this is a Formatted drive and it is not visible in Explorer/My Computer them you need to look at the Partition Type not being supported by your OS. If you are running Vista and formatted the drive under XP it may not be recognized as Vista has a different Security Model and will not recognize Older XP Partitions. If it is formatted to FAT32 the same is likely to apply under Vista.

If this is a IDE Drive and you are placing it on the same Data Lead as the Main Drive it needs to have the jumper set to Slave or CS so that both drives are not set to the same position on the same data lead.

If it is a SATA HDD you may need to set a jumper on it to SATA 1 if you have a SATA 1 M'Board so that the HDD is slowed down to the same transfer speed a the M'Board.

Col

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