Hard drive installation

Basically, is there anyone who can walk me through a hard drive instalation. It is only being used as extra storage, no need to install any programs, just the hardware installation and detection, or if there is a site I can go to to get the information that I need. PLEASE HELP!

 

Welcome!

well, let's see... i'm assuming that this will be the second hard drive, so let's write a little guide around it:

make sure it's off first.
First, you open the left side case cover of the computer (so if you're facing the front, take the side panel on the left off)
Then look straight on it. you should see another hard drive mounted into the computer about a little lower than center all the way on the right.
GROUND YOURSELF by touching the metal on your computer case
now, look at the new hard drive. see instructions on how to set it to slave/master? follow the instructions for slave (if it doesn't say, then do the opposite of what it would say if it said it...)
now put a power plug (4 wires, 2 black, 1 yellow, 1 red) into the drive.
see the grey wide cable connecting to the first hard drive? there's another connector on the middle of that cable. that goes into your new hard drive.
don't see it? then take the new cable that came with your hard drive and stick that in. the connectors look like 1----2-3. 1 goes into motherboard. 2 into new hard drive, and 3 into old hard drive
now stick the hard drive in under the old one. screw it in if you want (it's not gonna fall out or anything, you know)
turn on computer
go into bios (usually del or f2)
now see if it detects your secondary drive (this may vary from bios-bios, so just play around trying not to change anything else)
that's it!

oh, a couple things: if it's a sata drive, then just take the new cable and plug it straight into the motherboard
do NOT unplug the computer. you can't ground yourself if your computer's not grounded