Help, round 2

I wanna give a quick thanks to supportive people who helped me out with yesterday's issue, now sadly for today's! Thanks, Caliban and Satrow for their previous help. It has gotten me to here. http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=225238 (Last problem)

I don't know sata/pata/raid, cheetah, etc. I vaugely know raid as a 2 for 1 hd file system, that saves and maintains data using an array and spreading data for one file over two or more drives, I guess. I'm pretty fuzzy, and not better able to say more, and that's bout all I know.

hp pavilion elite m9180f 4g ram, intel 2 core quad proc. Due to info I read and the above members, I did copy an iso and installed on a new sata 500g hd. On coming home, I saw there were 2 HD's installed, as I had thought there always had been. But Only C: drive shows up, except for a tiny recovery portion on D:
factory image 1.3g free of 10.5g. But still prior, only C: drive was showing. I had the idea I was in/using a raid drive , sata for sure by the cables. My previous post lists the bios detected imminent HD crash. If both were raided, I had no idea which could be the bad one, so I removed both, using the dvd installed no problems.

Now, still no 'problem' technically, but I'm gettin in over my head. I randomly chose one of the old sata hd and plugged it in along with the new installed w/W7 hd. All of a sudden, my old desktop and files are back like they never left. Now, the PC seems strong, not fully tested. I'm not sure if I got the HD with mostly good sectors or not. I really only plugged in old driv3e to copy over my Wow files and others that I had no other option at the time. Not having a trusted drive to download files to for transfer.

So now, what? If I pull out other old HD, I go to 500g space, and I'd like the 1t I was at previous. Unless I'm not thinking of the raid and just a duplicate hd copy on one of the drives, thereby making 500g max space in old setup. Since this is new, I only know from today's reading there's no master/slave in sata. I wouldn't mind using the setup as it is now, but can I do any sort of test that will realistically show if the HD has bad sectors, or repair/ignore them? Is it like mixing old/new batteries, therefor bad? Just go down to 500g space until I can afford a 2nd new sata 500g?

My files are copied onto the g: partition of the new sata, so I need advice on best courses of action here. I can just unplug and use one, and go back to installing all but WoW onto the new drive. I usually do read a bit while I ask for help, to see if I can learn and get confirmation, or contrast to any answers I get. Thanks for all you've helped me with so far, and good weekend to all

 

In my experience the imminent failure warning is usually very accurate.

If you want to test the old HDs get the diagnostic tool from the manufacturer and run both the short/quick and long/extended test on them. If the tests determine the S.M.A.R.T. status is bad and offer no help in repairing errors then don't use them.

If the extended/long test offers to fix things then when done you might conceivably get quite a bit of use out of them. But never for critical/irreplacable data or your actual Operating System. HDs have a life span because of the moving parts so an old drive is still an old drive. [WARNING: letting the utility fix the drive may alter any data on them so copy anything important first]

Seatools http://majorgeeks.com/Seagate_SeaTools_for_Windows_d2858.html for Seagate drives.

Western Digital Diagnostics http://majorgeeks.com/Western_Digital_DLG_Diagnostics_d3505.html

 

Thanks. I bought and installed a new 500g. I'm not too worried bout the other one, as the remaining one from orig build seems to work ok.