Add a Second Hard Drive
Adding a second hard drive to a computer system is an easy way to get around storage problems, and also a good way to protect valuable data. With the cost of hard drives dropping well below $1 per gigabyte, it makes good financial sense to increase storage capacity by adding a second drive. But what kind of drive? And are they easy to install? Read on for buying tips and installation help...
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Preparing for a New Hard Drive
First, determine whether the computer system has room for an additional hard drive. Following the instructions in your computer's operations manual, open the computer case and find the hard drive. (It will probably be about an inch high, three and a half inches wide, and about five or six inches long, with two connectors plugged into it.) If there is room above or below that hard drive for another device the same size, you probably have room for a second hard drive.
IDE or SATA?
Next, look at the cables attached to the existing drive. One will be a power connector and the other will be a data connector. The power connector routes to the computer's power supply and the data connector routes to the motherboard. If the data connector is wide (about two inches), this is an IDE drive, and you will need to get a second IDE drive. Also, check to see if there is available space to plug in a second drive on the same ribbon cable. If not, you will need to install a second ribbon cable in the second drive controller slot on the motherboard, assuming it's available. (The cable should come with the drive.)
If the data connector is small (less than an inch wide), you have a newer SATA (Serial Advanced Technology Attachment) drive, and will need to purchase another SATA drive. You should have plenty of space available on the motherboard to add another SATA drive, as most motherboards that support SATA have at least four SATA connectors.
Megabytes or Gigabytes?
The storage capacity of the Hard drives of yesteryear were measured in megabytes, and one megabyte (MB) is about one million characters. There was a time when hard drives cost about $10 per MB, and they were about the size of a small toaster.
Today, hard drives are much smaller and much cheaper. You can buy one gigabyte (1GB = 1000MB) of storage for under a buck, and they're just a little bigger than a calculator.
So live large! I recommend you go for at least 80GB, or larger if it fits your budget. But check your computer's manual to see if it can handle a monster drive before you buy.
Installing Your Hard Drive
If you are installing an IDE drive, on the same cable as the original drive, set the new drive's jumper (the small plastic connector on the set of pins by the data connection) to the Slave setting. If you're installing an IDE drive on a second ribbon cable, and it's the only device on that cable, use the Master setting. If you have a CDROM drive attached to the secondary IDE connector, make the new hard drive Master and the CDROM Slave, setting the jumpers on each device accordingly. The position of the pins for the Master or Slave setting may vary from one drive to another, so refer to the documention that came with the drive.
Most importantly, before you mount the drive in the computer, look on the printed circuit board on the bottom of the drive to find which pin of the data connection is pin 1. It will be labeled with either a "1" or a solid white triangle. This information may also be stamped into the drive case near the connector. The ribbon cable will have a speckled red edge, and this edge MUST correspond to Pin 1 on the data connector, or the computer will not recognize your new drive.
With a SATA drive, the process is much easier. Simply plug the power connector into the drive, and connect the drive to the motherboard SATA controller using the supplied SATA cable. (Both connectors are both keyed to prevent improper connection.) With SATA drives, there is no need to change jumper settings, though you may need to update your computer's BIOS if it can't see the drive.
External Drives
If messing with motherboards is not your style, you can get an external hard drive that connects easily to your computer with a USB cable. External drives are a bit more expensive, but the easy setup and the fact that it's portable make it a good choice for some. The Iomega 33xxx series and the Maxtor OneTouch get high marks from reviewers and users, but other manufacturers such as Seagate and Western Digital make good products as well. Look for a drive that supports a USB 2.0 connection, or the faster FireWire hookup if your system supports it
Copying Your Data
Chances are, your new drive will be larger and faster than the old drive. If so, you may want to copy the contents of the old drive to the new one, and keep the old drive as additional storage. You may also opt to leave just the operating system files on the old drive and keep all user data on the new one.
For help copying your old drive to the new drive, see my article Copying Old Hard Drive to New PC.
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Check out other articles in this category:Posted by Bob Rankin on January 17, 2006 10:41 AM
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Most recent comments on "Add a Second Hard Drive"
(See all 82 comments for this article.)|
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Hi, I have got a similar issue when trying to install the second harddrive into my computer. I have got the windows XP pro SP2 running on my 250G HDD. when I trying to connect my SATA 500GB HDD which worked fine on my vista machine to the windows XP. The disk manager showing GUID partition table (GPT) partition style and I could only see the HDD name and the size, no actions could be taken when I right click on it. the correct HDD name showing under the device manager. EDITOR'S NOTE: You probably need SATA drivers for XP. Check the HD vendor's website. |
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I currently have a computer set up for an IDE hard drive and I want to install a SATA hard disk. Can i simply buy a SATA - IDE Adapter cord to install my new SATA hard drive? EDITOR'S NOTE: You can buy an adapter to enable the connection of a SATA drive to an IDE-based motherboard. Or you can connect an external SATA drive via USB. |
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i have a new computer with a sata hard drive, can i transfer files from my old ide hard drive? EDITOR'S NOTE: Sure, see http://askbobrankin.com/copying_old_hard_drive_to_new_pc.html |
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I just followed your instructions and added a second hard drive and partitioned it into to 2 parts with XP and I found it alot easier than I thought it would be, just be sure to check and double check your jumpers and cables, The rest is pretty easy. Some BIOS's are different just keep that in mind it's a good idea to check and make sure BIOS sees your new drive as SLAVE on older models. |
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My friend had a 5Gb drive. I found a 10Gb one and added it as the slave. It appears to work fine. We deleted all the files on the 10Gb drive and formatted it correctly, I believe. But I didn't know how two drives work together, so we tried loading up the 5Gb drive until it was full, then seeing if the excess went to the new drive. Instead we just got a message that the C: drive is full. I thought that they would work together, as one 15Gb drive. I've looked all over trying to find some information. I guess now that you need to put some programs on one drive, some on the other, then if one drive becomes full you do some shuffling of programs. Is that right? EDITOR'S NOTE: Unfortunately, Windows will not transparently treat the two drives as one large drive. You will have to move files from C: to D:, or just configure your programs to save data on the D: drive. As for moving programs, that's a little tricker. You'll probably run into problems because the registry will be pointing to files on the C: drive that no longer exist. It's better to remove and re-install on the D: drive. |
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I recently had to replace my main hard drive due to a malfunction. I was able to go into my old hard drive and get all the data off of it that I wanted. I have a second much larger hard drive with lots of data that I tried connecting but have been unable to access it. It recognizes that the drive is there but asks me if I want to format it, which I clearly do not want to do. I vaguely remember going through this process once before and, after a few days and restarts, it eventually just allowed me in. Surely there is a way to circumvent this whole magically appearing drive situation and make it work now, right? EDITOR'S NOTE: I can't imagine there's a waiting period... Try viewing it with Disk Management -- Start / Run / DISKMGMT.MSC |
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hi i have added a another internal hard drive as the one i have is full now how can i get them to work together i have made them dynamic and the new one i have tryed to make a spanned volume but it says only 7 mb and the rest as a seprate drive plsssss help EDITOR'S NOTE: With Windows XP Professional (not the Home Edition) you can create dynamic disks. But this is not easy for the average user. See http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/314343 |
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Hi i have the same problem as some of the other people i put my 2nd harddrive in its reconized by my computers update system but when i go into "my computer" it do not show up in there, any idea why that would be? i put the jumpers and cables in the correct places but for some reason i cant see it or use it. please help me. EDITOR'S NOTE: Is the disk formatted? Do you need SATA drivers? |
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I connected a hdd from a Gateway to an HP Pavilion laptop . I entered in BIOS to switch the Gateway HDD to the master HDD however when I attempt to boot the HP with the Gateway HDD the computer turns on and before Windows loads a black screen with a blinking cursor appears and nothing more. Why is that? I need to boot with the Gateway HDD in order the administrative profile which has a password. Without typing the password I can't access my files in the admin. profile because of that. However, I can access the rest of the data from the Gateway HDD via the E drive when the HD HDD is the configured as the master drive. EDITOR'S NOTE: I think you'll need to set the Master/Slave jumpers on the drives also. |
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Hi. If I unplug my second drive (SATA) then re-install Windows XP x64 on my master (IDE), will Windows recognize all the files (no programs) on my second drive when I plug it back into the fresh OS? I'm guessing I'd need to re-assign the drive's letter, but will the files still be accessible? EDITOR'S NOTE: I don't see why not... unless you format the drive, all the files should be fine. |
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