adding a 2nd hard drive

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Guest

I have a compaq computer with win xp pre-loaded. If I choose to add a 2nd
hard drive as a slave - how do I do this. This slave drive won't have an
operating system --- right?
After hooking it up as a slave will it just show up under "my computer" and
be identified as a drive that I can now store data on? If it is connected
via its own cable (not slaved) does this change things?

mike
 
tuuf said:
I have a compaq computer with win xp pre-loaded. If I choose to add a 2nd
hard drive as a slave - how do I do this. This slave drive won't have an
operating system --- right?
Right.

After hooking it up as a slave will it just show up under "my computer" and
be identified as a drive that I can now store data on? If it is connected
via its own cable (not slaved) does this change things?

mike
Click to expand...

You need to format it before you'll be able to see it in Windows.
Download the floppy from the manufacturer's web site to format it and
partition it. Or, if you bought a retail hard drive, the floppy should
have come with it.

Alias
 
Alias said:
You need to format it before you'll be able to see it in Windows. Download the
floppy from the manufacturer's web site to format it and partition it. Or, if
you bought a retail hard drive, the floppy should have come with it.
Click to expand...

No floppy or vendor software is required. Go to Disk Management (right-click on
My Computer, then Management), and the unpartitioned/unformatted drive should
show up. Partition it as desired, then format and assign drive letters.

If you think you will EVER use it as a boot drive, make the first partition a
Primary partition; I would use 10-20 GB for that. In the mean time you can use
it for pagefile space. Then partition the rest as desired for data, apps, etc.
 
Alias said:
But it will work.
Click to expand...

Most of the time. Not as often these days, but in the past, some vendors'
proprietary drivers and formatting schemes were problematic when OS upgrades or
machine swaps were attempted.
 
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