Add a Second Hard Drive - Comments Page 9

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.
Please help me!

EDITOR'S NOTE: I think you'll need to set the Master/Slave jumpers on the drives also.

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.

Thanks for the informative article! I'm about to buy a second hard drive that is 750GB. The website says "48-bit addressing is required to exceed the 137GB capacity limitation imposed by 28-bit addressing." How can I find out if my computer can handle this?

EDITOR'S NOTE: Any computer made within the last 5 years can handle a large hard drive. If your current drive is larger than 137 GB, you'll be fine.

Thanks, but believe it or not, I bought my computer October 2003 and the current drive is 120 GB. Any way to find out if I have 48-bit addressing?

EDITOR'S NOTE: You'll need to find out what motherboard you have, and then check to see if it supports large drives. Feel free to post here again if you can't find the specs for the motherboard.

I have an 80 gig hard drive in my current computer. I have a 20 gig from our old Pentium 2 computer that I want to put into our current computer. It has a lot of music, pictures and programs on it that we want to use. The old Hard drive is Windows 98 and our Pentium 4 is Windows XP. Should I be able to put the old one in and access our old information?

EDITOR'S NOTE: Yes, the operating system on the old drive is not relevant. As long as the drive works, you'll be fine.

I just bought a new pc. I followed the Vista transfer files, but apparently that does not transfer the programs. The problem is a number of my programs were downloads from the internet and I don't have the keys anylonger. How do I transfer my software? The old harddrive wasn't damaged, I just needed Vista and a larger harddrive. Could I simply remove the hard drive from my old machine and insert it into my new machine? Ugh!

EDITOR'S NOTE: You could transfer the program files that way, but you'd still be lacking the registry keys to make them work. It's too bad Vista lacks the ability to transfer the programs. PCmover from Laplink claims to do this. See http://www.laplink.com/pcmover/

Have installed a second drive (F:) and it works fine. How can I change the "my pictures" to point to the new location where I now have all my pictures, instead of the C: drive?

EDITOR'S NOTE: Open "My Computer" then double click the icon for your new (F:) drive. Next, open your "My Documents" folder in a separate window. Click ONCE on the "My Pictures" folder (to highlight it) then click Edit/Cut. Click inside the the other window where the (F:) drive is displayed then press Edit/Paste. To verify it worked, click "My Pictures" on the Start menu and it should open the folder on your (F:) drive.

I have a Western Dig HD that was in my old XP Machine. I just purchased a new machine with x64 OS. I installed my XP SATA HD in the x64 machine and although the bios sees the 2nd drive I cannot access it in Explorer. I see it in Device Mgr and it says the drive is working and there. But there's no drive letter and I cannot find it in Windows. I am assuming that I have to format the XP drive with x64 FAT system? I'm not sure what to do. Can you help me?

EDITOR'S NOTE: You may not have the SATA drivers on the x64 machine. Check with WD to see if they support that drive on a 64-bit OS.

OK I got the drives to both work with disk mgmt in control panel. Here's the issue though. I have a 320GB SATA and a 250GB SATA. My bios sees them the correct size but windows only sees the 320GB as a 127GB and the 250GB as a 170GB. I look in disk mgmt and they are listed the same: 127 and 170
I dont understand how to get their full capacity with x64
I formatted both with NTFS. I'm so confused. This x64 is also driving me batty with all the driver updates i need to find for my hardware.

Computer
Intel Core 2 Quad 9550 2.83ghz
8GB ram
2 WD SATA HD 350GB, 250GB
NVIDIA GE force 8500 GT
Windows x64 Professional

hi, i just got a second wd 500 gig sata hard drive and i pluged in all the correct cables and the hard drive shows up in my device manager and when i go into the computer settings before the computer boots up but it will not show up in my computer and i have the drivers i am pretty sure. can u help me?