Add a Second Hard Drive - Comments Page 5

Will my computer work, if I take out an old hard drive and put a new one in?

EDITOR'S NOTE: Depends what you mean by "work" -- that's akin to a brain transplant. You will certainly NOT have your programs and files that existed on the old drive. But you CAN install Windows on the new drive and start over.

Can you install 2 internal hard drives in a laptop? Also how to you transfer data from one internal to another?

EDITOR'S NOTE: Most laptops do not have any space for a second drive. Some (such as MacBook) allow you to replace the CD/DVD drive with a second drive. On a Windows system, see the Files and Settings Transfer Wizard.

great site, and tips. thanks for the help. :)

Hi. I am also in desperate need of help. I have an AMD Athlon64 3800, with an ASROCK K8FN6G-VSTA, with a 40Gb IDE Maxtor HD with Windows XP installed. I have bought a SATAII 80Gb Samsung HD, and had no trouble getting it recognized by BIOS or by Windows. Formatting was also easily accomplished.

There is just one problem... as soon as I plugged in the SATA2 HD and turned on my PC, the disk hums loudly every 2 seconds for about 2 seconds, and my PC does not seem to be able to access both HDs at the same time (at least that´s what I think is happening since while the humming is occuring my system crawls along, even taking a minute just to load desktop icons, and the IDE HD makes no sound at all during those two seconds). I though this would go away after the HD was recognized and formatted, so I formatted it. The problem did not go away.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Any time a hard drive makes a loud noise you have Trouble. It may be defective, or not compatible with your existing system or drive. Did you try running with ONLY the Sata drive in the machine?

Hi, To those that are having trouble getting Windows to recognise their SATA drives as additional storage.
If the BIOS has recognised the drive boot into windows and then go into Control Panel, Admin Tools, Computer Management, Storage, Disk Management. At this point you should be asked to initialise the disk. Once that is done you can assign a drive letter and format the drive.
Hope that helps.

I tried to replace my slave. I got a segate 250 gig HD and I tried all comb. of pins for slave and/or Master. Yet the problem is there. The computer beeps but then I get a black screen. I even tried to connect the data port while my wondow was running, that just freezes everything. Please help.

EDITOR'S NOTE: If you tried to plug in the drive while the computer was running, you may have fried the drive.

Hi, I was just wondering, would you need to upgrade your power supply after adding a hard drive, and adding ram.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Generally not. If your power supply is not doing the job, you may have random errors or restarts. I recommend 300W or greater for the power supply.

Great Page, and tips! I recently upgraded a system. Put in a new motherboard, and I know once you do that, you have to either format your old hard drive, or start "fresh" with a new one. Did that, trying to pull off files off the old sata drive that was bootable. Once I attached this to motherboard, disk management see's hard drive but I can not access it. There is no drive letter, and I can not initialize it. What can I do to avoid formatting and loosing all data?

EDITOR'S NOTE: You should NOT have to reformat a hard drive after installing a new motherboard! You may need to run the BIOS setup to help the motherboard auto-scan and recognize the drives. In Disk Management, can you rightclick the drive and assign a drive letter?

I installed a SATA drive as second hard drive, leaving the original IDE drive alone. In the boot up the screen says 'Primary hard disk 1 not found'. Next the IDE is listed as secondary 'channel'. Do you think I should update my system bios? It's a dell 8250.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Yes, it sounds like you should tell the BIOS to boot from the IDE disk first.

I have installed an IDE internal hard drive. It is recognized by device manager and has an assigned letter D, Disk managment say it is healthy (active) but the drive is not available in windows explorer. Disk managment says the C drive is healthy (system). Both the C and D drives have MBR partition. I have disconnected the CD drives and floppy drive to avoid letter conflicts but the D drive is still not available. I do not want to delete the D drive partition or I will lose my data.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Can you see the drive from a DOS command prompt? Enter the D: command there and see if you can list files with DIR.