Add a Second Hard Drive - Comments Page 3

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.

i have add a new 250gb ide hard disk to my pc but i not found a new local disc in my computer,what should i do to use this new hard disk?do you think that i do mistake when i put that hard disk?

EDITOR'S NOTE: You may need to format the disk. Try viewing it with Disk Management -- Start / Run / DISKMGMT.MSC

Guys, for anyone who can't see their new slave hdd on windows explorer, but can in device manager, you will need to run disk mangement as the ed said in response to shah. You will then need to initialize the new drive, create a partition, and format the newly created partition. The new drive should then be available for use.

I installed a second HD (200GB, Maxtor). Bios and WindowsXP Device manager recognized it, but no drive letter in Explorer. Found a few posts that help me get it right: 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. Thanks for sharing the wealth!

I just tried to install a new seagate barracuda 400G internal HD as a slave in my friends comp. I set the jumpers for old (WD 80G) HD as master, new (SB) as slave. Booted up, went to BIOS and new HD is there (recognised). In windows (xp home) went to disk management and new HD is there (black) as uninitialized. Right click on it but there is no option to initialize it?! What should I do next?

EDITOR'S NOTE: Do you see the "Format" option?

I have just had to re-install windows xp home edition on my pc. I was running professional. The second hard drive can be seen in both Bios and device manager but when you go into my computer it doesnt exist. If you go into disk management, the hard drive is also there but it will only let you delete the partition and nothing else. It says the disk is active and heathy. Any idea's? I have loads of backup info on this drive so I don't really want to delete it if possible.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Are you sure the jumpers are set correctly? See also earlier comments about IDE connectors and external drive conversions.

Have DELL XPS Gen3 with one SATA HDD. Added a new SATA2 HDD (Hitachi). BIOS sees it and Windows XP diskmanager also. I could initialize the drive but then disk manager will not show any options for formatting or assigning drive letter. It only shows an option for changing between Basic and dynamic mode. What to do?

I have a WIN-XP Pro. PC with P4 40 GB Seagate HDD. If I want to add same size(40 GB)Seagate HDD as a slave how can I set the jumpr setting in both HDD & Is there any other changes to be done in the mother bord.

EDITOR'S NOTE: No changes needed to the motherboard. Just set one drive to Master and the other to Slave. If you don't know which pin settings to use, check the HDD vendor's website.

I have added a 250GB Samsung HDD to my new Dell Precision 690. BIOs finds the drive without problem and I can install and run Vista Ultimate. However, when I reboot from within Vista, BIOS does not detect the drive and it will not reboot. Switch off the machine and cold boot and it boots fine??? (interestingly, I cannot install Win XP on this drive, "no drive detected" and neither this or my original drive are detected as SATA II, just as "add in hard drive"). Any help would be greatly appreciated.

EDITOR'S NOTE: WinXP does not have support for SATA II drives. Check with your drive manufacturer to see if you can get a driver that can be used for this purpose.

I am trying to get some data from a hard drive that was installed on a friends PC. It was his main hard drive but his motherboard packed up and we want to try and salvage some files. I have attached it to my XP computer as a slave drive and I can see the drive in 'My Computer'. His HDD has XP OS on it as does mine.

However when I try and open up the hard drive it says that I need to format the drive. I believe that this would mean basically wiping the whole drive of its contents, is this correct? Is there a way that I can get around having to format the drive as I really want to get some of his files from his PC.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Windows is telling you that the file access table is corrupted or missing. Try the TESTDISK program I've mentioned in http://askbobrankin.com/hard_drive_recovery.html

I have vista installed on my pc. I purchased a new and faster sata2 drive. I installed vista on the second drive running vista on the original drive. How can i boot up my pc with my new and faster drive without the old drive. I tried to boot up on the new drive but nothing happens. I need to chnage the the bios back to the old drive as the primary boot drive. I dont want to depend on the old drive to boot up. how can i do this.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Does the machine boot up if you remove the old drive and make the new one primary?