Add a Second Hard Drive - Comments Page 2

I see several people have the same problem I do, but I don't see an answer. I just built a new PC. The primary HD is new. I added my Maxtor (which I had as a second HD in my old system). The BIOS sees it, Device Manager sees it, but Windows Explorer does not. Nothing changed on the HD from the old system (that recognized it) to the new. Also, the new HD is 250 GB but Windows Explorer only shows 125 GB.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Try setting the jumpers on the second drive to Slave or Cable Select. Also make sure it's on the second connector on the IDE cable, or that it's plugged into the IDE2 slot. As for the Windows not showing the full size of your 250GB drive, it may be you have an older hard drive controller. Some support only 128GB max.

Ok, I'm a relative rookie at this hardware stuff, so be kind. I'm venturing into the unknown realm of adding a second 15GB HD to my existing 3GB. (which until 3 months ago was measured in mere MBs!) I've finally entered the new millenium! Anyway,I gather you're talking about adding it to the existing HD IDE. But, the net-tech guy at work was explaining how I should attach it to my C Drive IDE (feel free to correct my terminlogy!)

And allow me to see if I follow his reasoning: Primarily it's a CYA for a system crash. If it's connected as one big hard drive, crashing would make me lose absolutely everything. His way, I'd lose the OS on my master HD, but keep whatever was in my slave HD. (physical vs virtual?)

I'm not going to attempt this on my own -- I have a friend that is fairly knowledgable I'm going to rely on, but I want to follow what he's doing since this could majorly affect my system. And besides, I just want to learn . . .

EDITOR'S NOTE: You can't attach a new hard drive to an existing one. Adding a new drive will ALWAYS mean adding a new drive letter (D, E, etc.)

I recently upgraded computers and am now venturing into the world of SATA drives (used to only work with IDEs). Here's the deal though. My motherboard currently has 6 spots for SATA drive connections. However, I'd like to be running upwards of 8 SATA hard drives. Is there ANY way to do this?? Perhaps via a SATA Y-split cable or another way? Or am I limited to just those 6?

EDITOR'S NOTE: There are SATA port multipliers available. I'm not sure how far you can go, but that sounds doable.

I can install 4 sata's and 2 ide's and a external, but thats nuts. I'll be happy to get to a terabyte. Learning as fast as I can, JIM RICHARDS

I'm trying to upgrade an aging-but-pretty-capable IBM Laptop (Thinkpad T22) by replacing its original 20GB HDD with a 60GB one. I've got a PCMCIA card that gives me USB2 ports (the built-in USB port is 1.1), and an external 2.5" USB HDD box. And I want to clone my 20GB HDD (1 big partition) onto a 30GB partition at the front of the new drive.

So far, I've struck out with BootitNG and DiskCopy for DOS and Norton Ghost 2003 -- different problems with each. Trinity Rescue Kit (Linux) might work, but I'm not nearly Linux geek enough to use it. Do you have comparable instructions anywhere for us laptop folks who DON'T have room for two internal HDDs?

EDITOR'S NOTE: Acronis can do a full backup "image" to the external drive that can be restored to another disk. I recommend it.

Hi I recently purchased a new 2.5" notebook HD and am using it with an external USB case for extra memory. However, I didn't realise that I had to format the HD first, and I can't seem to do that through the USB - says something that the drivers were installed, but it can't start up, or something like that. I opened my pc, but my IDE cables are too big for it, and it is definitely not a SATA HD. How do I go about formatting this without a laptop?

EDITOR'S NOTE: You should be able to format a USB-connected drive. Can you give a more specific error message?

I have an HDD that I pulled from a different computer and currently have connected via USB in an external case. The drive has a 4Gb partition in Fat32 and a 220Gb partition in NTFS both are healthy, the second drive states Healthy (Active) but no drive letter is assigned so I cannot access it in My Computer. If I right click on the bar in Disk Management, the only options i can access are Help and Properties. What can I do to assign a drive letter?

EDITOR'S NOTE: You may need to change the jumpers from MASTER to SLAVE or CABLE SELECT.

First of all, I'd like to thank you for your helpful page, and for replying to a lot of questions that have been asked. Now for my question. I know my computer supports SATA hard drives, as my current hard drive is SATA. I am going to install an identical hard drive to my current one. But is it a possibility that my computer cannot support more than one drive?

EDITOR'S NOTE: You'll have to check the motherboard to see if there is another SATA connector. Usually there are two or four, so chances ore good.

Nice article! I put a new SATA drive in my pc and installed xp. I put an older SATA drive as the secondary drive. However I am getting stop errors whenever I have the second drive connected. It won't let me get into XP. It pretty much tells me there is a driver corrupted in the XP that is installed on the second drive from my old pc.(was getting stop errors - unable to boot into XP on that as well).

Is there anyway to not boot the second hard drive, load XP on the first HD and then from there format that 2nd drive so I can start fresh?

Nice article.... and good advice... I have a data recovery problem... I had a Motherboard blow, but hard drives (SATA Raid stripe array) with pics movies that I need.

Hooked them to a slightly older machine with Belkin PCI Serial ATA card (F5U198) and can see it as "uninitialized" and "unallocated" with the total GBit storage correct and Raid 0 set up in properties... but I still cannot assign a drive letter to it... Any ideas? Thanks in advance!

Hello. I am having a problem with my hard drive. I have used it before and everything worked fine, but when I transfered it to another computer windows wants me to format it, but when I transfered it back to the old computer it opened up fine. Is there a way to bypass the formatting stage without actually formatting the drive?

EDITOR'S NOTE: When does it prompt you to format? Can you cancel the operation and continue?

I am having a similar problem as Stuart. I have winxp professional on a 80gb hd, installed an additional 300 gb hb and all was working fine, then my operating system went sour, I tried to place my second drive on a different workstation with win xp to trasfer data and that workstation device manager sees the drive but explorer does not show it. HELP I have 100's of photos I use for a business.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Make sure the jumpers are set correctly for Master and Slave drives. Also note that a SATA drive does not act as a Master or Slave. If you add an IDE drive to a system with an existing SATA, the IDE must be set as a Master.

I just upgraded my hard drive in my laptop from 15 gb's to 60 gb's and the operating system is still showing the original capacity. Is it not going to recognize this or can i fix it?

EDITOR'S NOTE: Where are you looking to get that capacity number?

I have just bought a second hard drive which is 160Gb to go with my 80Gb. It is a Samsung HD160JJ and is a SATA 11 (2) connection. My problem is, the computer knows it is there. But it doesnt show it as a drive that i can use in my computer. I looked up how to install it but the only thing i found was a dm_creator file that you put on a floppy and boot from it to install the hard drive. But this has failed everytime. Please could you help me here?

I have 2 computers, Dell/Compaq, both with working IDE 20G HD's. I want to take the HD from the Dell system, and use it as additional storage on the Compaq. I have already checked to make sure the Dell HD is compatible with the Compaq MOBO, etc, etc, by removing the Compaq HD and installing the Dell HD.

My question is: Whats the easiest way to add the other drive? I have an IDE cable that has two connectors (Master/Slave) but its not currently the one in use on the Compaq. Can I simply set the 2nd HD jumper to "slave", replace the existing cable with the one with both connecters and go?

EDITOR'S NOTE: That will work fine. You can also use two IDE cables, as long as you set the jumpers correctly.

Can i add a old hard drive from another computer to my computer i have now,if so do i follow the same steps as above, i tried to add one before but the computer didn't reconize it, it was from a older model computer thou, thats probably why.

EDITOR'S NOTE: If it's an IDE drive (they've been around for quite a few years) it should work. Be sure to set the jumpers to indicate it's a slave drive.

I have a SATA drive that I am using as my second drive. My primary is IDE. When I try using the SATA as primary the bios sees it but when I try installing windows XP pro it does not see it. The SATA is 240 Gb but windows will not recognize it to load any installation files. So I have to still use the 100 GB IDE drive to install XP pro. What am I doing wrong???

EDITOR'S NOTE: Did you try removing the IDE when installing to the SATA?

When turning an old internal 78GB hard drive into an external hard drive for a 40GB computer, do I have to re-format the 40GB computer hard drive? I understand that I have to re-format the 78GB drive but do I have to re-format the 40GB drive also?

EDITOR'S NOTE: You shouldn't have to reformat either one!

Great page, great help! My main household PC went haywire this week, and fails to get past the windows screen before restarting itself. No big deal as I have been thinking of upgrading anyways. But I want the files off that (partitioned) HDD. I think the graphics card / mobo is goosed, so I removed the HDD and hooked it into a spare one - bios recognised etc etc as for the others above, However...same as some of the other posters, i cannot get the PC (the spare one) ro recognise the older HDD in Win XP explorer. I have 60gb of files I need to recover from that HD, and transfer to my new laptop, but the old pc crashed and fails to reboot long enough for me to copy the file sto my external HD. Now, is there any way I can hook up the old internal HD (Western Digital 80gb) via USB, to the new laptop without making it a full on part of a system? Is there a cable/connector kit available to do this? I really, really don't want to lose that info!!!

EDITOR'S NOTE: It may be configured as a MASTER drive, you need it as a SLAVE in the other machine. Check the jumpers. You can also convert it to an external drive. See http://askbobrankin.com/convert_internal_hard_drive_to_external.html

I have a Dell Inspiron B130 laptop, and it only came with a 40GB HD. After installing Vista and Office, I don't hardly have any room. Is is possible to put 2 hard drives in a laptop, or do I need to buy an external? Thanks!

EDITOR'S NOTE: Doubtful that there's room for a second drive...