Adding a 2nd hard drive.

Hi guys and gals. I looking to add a 2nd hard drive to an older system.

Never done it before, as I never needed to do it before. I have a 40gb and looking to add another 40gb to increase space.

What do I need to know? TIA.

 

First, good luck finding a 40gb drive unless you go with a used drive. I don't think any of the main HD makers are building drives under 80gb these days. Also, since it's an older system, be sure you have an available IDE connector. Most older systems have two IDE channels on the motherboard, each channel can handle two devices. So, if you have 2 CD/DVD drives and a 40gb hard drive, you'd have one available IDE connector. But- depending on the age of the system, you might also have SATA connectors on the motherboard. If you have these (some older boards have 2, some have 4; newer system have at least 4, usually 6 or more), then you can get a SATA drive which is faster than IDE.... so, do your research on your motherboard make/model and find out what's up with the available IDE/SATA connections....

 

I already have the hard drive and available connections, just need to know how to set it up.

 

This depends on what devices you have installed already. Can you provide a computer make and model please?

 

I'm putting together a computer for a friend in need and doing it as a favor, so trying to keep my costs down.

It's a generic tower and I believe that the board has a 2.4ghz P4. I have a 400w power supply, (2) 40gb hard drives, enough cables and plenty of room for everything.

Just trying to get an idea on how to set it up, as I've never added a 2nd hard drive into a system before.

I'll post the exact specs after I get it put together and maybe that will shed some more light. Thanks.

 

If the drive is sharing a data cable with another IDE device (it doesn't matter if the other device is a hard drive or CD/DVD drive), be sure the other device is jumpered as MASTER and connected to the end connector of the data cable, and jumper your new hard drive as SLAVE and connect it to the 2nd connector on the data cable. Connect the power to the new drive, and boot up! Windows will automatically recognize and install the drive. If the drive is not already partitioned and formatted, you'll have to do it yourself. It won't appear in 'My Computer' so you'll have to use the disk management console (in Windows XP) by clicking Start > Run, and type diskmgmt.msc and press Enter. Then find the drive in the lower right pane, right click on the bold print that says something like Drive 5: (purple box in screen shot below) and click 'Initialize'. If 'Initalize' doesn't appear in the list, no worries, just skip this and go on to the next step. Then right click in the area just to the right of the bold print (green box in screen shot) and select 'New Partition'. Then follow the on-screen prompts, and select "Quick Format" at the appropriate time. If you don't do a quick format, it can take a long time to fully format the drive (a 40gb probably only 20 min, but with big drives like 500gb, it can take over 90min). That's it!

(there's plenty of free tools out there that will take care of formatting the drive, try EASEUS Partition Master )