Add a Second Hard Drive - Comments Page 5

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?

I'm running vista 32 and have just instaled a second 500gb SATA HDD. This is recognised in both bios and device manager but not in my computer! What can i do to make the drive accesable as a secondary HDD?

EDITOR'S NOTE: Is the drive formatted?

I have a 40GB hard drive in my computer right now. I have a 80GB hard drive from another computer that I want to put in.

Can I delete EVERYTHING from the 80GB hard drive and then put it into my other computer and will it still work? Or Should I leave all the files and the Windows it has and put it in?

I ask because I want to have as much memory as possible and because the 80GB drive has files and programs that I dont want on my other computer.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Yes, there's no reason not to wipe the 80GB disk clean. You can do that by formatting it before or after you install it in the other computer.

hello. i have connected the sata hard drive to ide mother board through sata adapter but it is not working.

Hi, I have questions about how to install a harddrive from my old computer to my current computer. also, can we extend our power cable, because its kinda short to conect one drive to another?

EDITOR'S NOTE: Yes, you can extend a power connector. You'll need to buy a cable like this: http://www.directron.com/cbl-y.html

Hey, I have a C2D system. I don't remember the motherboard but it supports both IDE and SATA. My problem is that I already have a 250GB SATA HD and am now adding on a 40GB IDE, but the system is not picking it up. Can you guide me through a few trouble shooting steps. Do I have to make any changes in BIOS and/or place the jumpers in any correct order? Thank you

EDITOR'S NOTE: You should set the jumpers on the IDE to Master. SATA has no master/slave protocol.

Hey Andy you seem to have not formatted the hard drive so it is not showing up in windows explorer/Computer.

To do this open computer management followed by disk managment .Find your hard drive , create partition according to your requirement then format it to ntfs. Then it will show up in computer.

Hi, I have an HP machine running XP Pro. I have an external HDD enclosure with USB connection with a new 320GB Western Digital WD3200AAJB PATA (IDE)HDD inside.

Under Device Manager I can see the drive, but not under my computer/explorer. When I right click it from the list, look at properties and click "Volumes" then "Populate" it says the drive is not Initialized? What do I have to do to make the HDD work, and asign it a drive letter? Thanks heaps, and hope you can help! :-)

EDITOR'S NOTE: Has the drive been formatted? Sounds like you need to do so.

It is recommended that you format you harddrive if you transfering from one of to another. If you can't find it in my computer but in bios, right click in my computer and go to device manager. It should come up with install hardware and from there you can format it and access it. Hope it helped anyone.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Yikes! Formatting will erase ALL data... proceed with caution.

Yeah I just install a 1 TB WD data hdd and it works great but my computer shows only 990 gb. help... Also if you want to format a new hdd and not lose the data. Connect it to another comp and back it up to discs or somthing, then install the new drive and format and transfer the data. Of you haven't got two pcs then ask a trend, just don't break anyting...

EDITOR'S NOTE: The missing 10 gigs could be in a separate partition, or it could be that after formatting, only 990 GB is actually available for use. Don't sweat the 1% difference, drives are super cheap now.

My problem is, when i install my dvd rom together with my IDE hard drive, my dvd icon won't appear in windows and it also doesn't work. But my cd rom works well with my IDE drive. And my SATA hard drive also works well with both dvd and cd rom. What is the problem with my pc? It seems, something wrong happens if i use my IDE drive and dvd rom. Thanks

EDITOR'S NOTE: Are you connecting them serially? Make sure the jumpers are set correctly, since both are IDE.