Add a Second Hard Drive - Comments Page 6

I have 40gb sata drive install. I want to install 320gb sata drive to my system will I need to do anything so that it reconizes the drive? I have XP SP3 install. please advice thanks.

EDITOR'S NOTE: I say plug and go, it should work fine.

If I pull the IDE hard drive out of my existing PC and put it in an external enclosure, will I be able to access the files on that hard drive simnply by plugging it into another PC? Do I need to set the IDE hard drive jumpers to slave?

EDITOR'S NOTE: I don't think it matters, but if you have a problem, I would set them to MASTER, not SLAVE.

hi i have an 80gig IDE HD, and just installed a new 250gig SATA HD on my pc, when i turned it on it said new hardware found and ready to use, but when i go to my computer it doesn't shows up there only the old drive, what can i do?

EDITOR'S NOTE: Was the SATA drive ever formatted?

hi , can I install 2 hard drives one is 10 gig's

and the second is 15 gig's so I can add them and have 25 gig's in one ??? thank you

EDITOR'S NOTE: Windows will not treat two physical drives as one logical drive. But Linux and Mac systems can do that.

hey, I just installed my second hard drive, everything is connected, it shows in bios, and I tried going to disk manager and it's not showing so I am not able to format it, any ideas?

EDITOR'S NOTE: Is the new drive SATA? If so, you may need to install drivers. Check the drive vendor website.

Hi, i currently have one 350gb sata hd in my desktop.I'd like to add the old one with same capacity and sata too.I saw i don't have the blue cable,do i have to get one right?.after install it,do i need to change the bios settting?

EDITOR'S NOTE: Yes, you need the cable. Should not have to make any BIOS changes.

HEY, CAN'T I ADD ANOTHER HD IN MY DESKTOP WITHOUT FORMAT IT IN ADVANCE?

Hi, I have an existing sata hard drive (320gb) with xp and vista on as a duel boot, and it is nearly full.

If I buy a new internal sata hard drive to go with this that is a lot larger like 1tb, are there good chances that it will be recognised and I can then format it and backup data on it?

Also if a drive in a store says 1tb, then will it always result in less once formatted to NTFS? because of the 1024, and 1000 issue?

EDITOR'S NOTE: If your motherboard has another SATA slot , the drive should work fine. And yes, the amount of usable space will always be slightly less than what the label reads.

why cant i see my 2 nd hard drive in my computer?
but i see it in devise manager

I installed a third hard drive into my computer and the only free slots were neighboring other hard drives. Is there any danger in mounting two hard drives right alongside each other?

EDITOR'S NOTE: Should not be a problem. If a drive bay is open, you can use it.

My computer has both IDE and SATA motherboard plug-ins. (sorry, I do not know the proper term) I have a 100gb IDE drive installed. I want to add a second hard drive. A new SATA 1tb as a slave drive. My motherboard DOES have 2 SATA slots that I can plug in my new SATA drive to.

1. Will the above set-up work as IDE master and SATA slave, or will using both an IDE drive and a SATA drive create problems?

2. If above would not work well, I see that they sell adaptors that snap onto the SATA drive that would convert my SATA drive plugs to the older IDE data and power plugs. (It would cost about $20) Would this work better than #1 configuration? Would I loose speed on my now converted SATA drive?

EDITOR'S NOTE: Should not be a problem to connect both an IDE and a SATA. If your computer is lacking SATA drivers, you can use the adapter to connect it as IDE. I don't know if there will be a speed degradarion, sorry.

The tip about master/slave setting harddisk and dvd-writer is spot on! Thanks!!! Now it works

I Installed second 1TB SATA HD and formated it (Win XP: Control Panel=Performance and Maintenance=Administrative Tools=Computer Management=Disk Management=...)New HD works OK,but there is one problem. When PC goes ON after sleep mode,New HD is invizible and I have to restart my PC. How can I resolve this problem?

EDITOR'S NOTE: Are you saying the drive works fine when you boot up normally, but cannot be found after returning from sleep mode? Sounds like it might not be powering back on when the system wakes up. Check in BIOS to see if there are any SATA or power related settings that might help.

Thanks for NOTE! In BIOS of course I can see second HD, becouse I have to reboot PC to go in BIOS, but I didn`t find any settings that can help.
Any idea?????

Just purchased a new PC and would like to add the hard drive from my old computer. Question is this: The old hard drive has an OS on it as well as the new hard drive. If I simply hook up the second hard drive, will the new computer try to read the OS and mess up my new computer's hard drive. Don't know how you would have two OS going at the same time.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Your computer's BIOS tells the system which drive to boot from, usually that's the C: drive. It's not a problem to have more than one botoable drive.

Hi. I've followed your article to add a 2nd hard drive (Seagate 160Gb ATA) to a Dell 4550 desktop running XP. I set the jumper to "cable select" to match the setting of the 1st drive. The DOS BIOS settings screen shows the 2nd disk as 30Mb, but the Windows' "My Computer" doesn't show the 2nd drive at all. Any idea what may cause this problem?

EDITOR'S NOTE: Is the drive formatted? Does it have existing partitions?

I've got a Terabyte hard drive and it works like a dream. I use it to back up my original disks and so on. My only problem was, being a bit of a novice at the insides of a cpu, Initializing the disk. Once i did that it was fine. Quite easy really isnt it! Ram last week, HDD this week. I might build a system from scratch.Is it hard to build one from scratch? I'm assuming it is, or would be for me being pretty new. Any tips?

EDITOR'S NOTE: You need a little bit of geek in you, but not much. If you've already replaced RAM and HDD, then you can do it. Check with TigerDirect or other component suppliers, and buy yourself a case, power supply, motherboard, RAM video card, drives, and maybe a modem. Talk to a salesperson to make sure they're all compatible and you can put it together with just a screwdriver. No soldering iron required!

Hi there. My sata hard drive is dieing so I bought a new one. I have it up an run. My prob is I connected up my old sata hard drive to get info off it but my windows xp is not picking it up. What do I need to do? I also have a old hard drive as well it worked as a second hard drive well but i cant see my it in my computer any more?
but i see it in devise manager. thanks

Bob,
If you have your two IDE HDDs connected to an 80 ribbon cable, do you set the jumpers on both to CS?

I've just got a new PC with a SATA drive and I want to transfer data to it from my old IDE hard drive. I've removed the jumper to make the IDE a slave and I can see it in BIOS but Windows 7 isn't recognising it. Any ideas what I need to do to sort this please?

EDITOR'S NOTE: Your IDE drive is not a slave to the SATA, since SATA does not have a master/slave system. Try setting the IDE to master, or connect it externally via USB.