Add a Second Hard Drive
Adding a second hard drive to a computer system is an easy way to get around storage problems, and also a good way to protect valuable data. With the cost of hard drives dropping well below $1 per gigabyte, it makes good financial sense to increase storage capacity by adding a second drive. But what kind of drive? And are they easy to install? Read on for buying tips and installation help...
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Preparing for a New Hard Drive
First, determine whether the computer system has room for an additional hard drive. Following the instructions in your computer's operations manual, open the computer case and find the hard drive. (It will probably be about an inch high, three and a half inches wide, and about five or six inches long, with two connectors plugged into it.) If there is room above or below that hard drive for another device the same size, you probably have room for a second hard drive.
IDE or SATA?
Next, look at the cables attached to the existing drive. One will be a power connector and the other will be a data connector. The power connector routes to the computer's power supply and the data connector routes to the motherboard. If the data connector is wide (about two inches), this is an IDE drive, and you will need to get a second IDE drive. Also, check to see if there is available space to plug in a second drive on the same ribbon cable. If not, you will need to install a second ribbon cable in the second drive controller slot on the motherboard, assuming it's available. (The cable should come with the drive.)
If the data connector is small (less than an inch wide), you have a newer SATA (Serial Advanced Technology Attachment) drive, and will need to purchase another SATA drive. You should have plenty of space available on the motherboard to add another SATA drive, as most motherboards that support SATA have at least four SATA connectors.
Megabytes or Gigabytes?
The storage capacity of the Hard drives of yesteryear were measured in megabytes, and one megabyte (MB) is about one million characters. There was a time when hard drives cost about $10 per MB, and they were about the size of a small toaster.
Today, hard drives are much smaller and much cheaper. You can buy one gigabyte (1GB = 1000MB) of storage for under a buck, and they're just a little bigger than a calculator.
So live large! I recommend you go for at least 80GB, or larger if it fits your budget. But check your computer's manual to see if it can handle a monster drive before you buy.
Installing Your Hard Drive
If you are installing an IDE drive, on the same cable as the original drive, set the new drive's jumper (the small plastic connector on the set of pins by the data connection) to the Slave setting. If you're installing an IDE drive on a second ribbon cable, and it's the only device on that cable, use the Master setting. If you have a CDROM drive attached to the secondary IDE connector, make the new hard drive Master and the CDROM Slave, setting the jumpers on each device accordingly. The position of the pins for the Master or Slave setting may vary from one drive to another, so refer to the documention that came with the drive.
Most importantly, before you mount the drive in the computer, look on the printed circuit board on the bottom of the drive to find which pin of the data connection is pin 1. It will be labeled with either a "1" or a solid white triangle. This information may also be stamped into the drive case near the connector. The ribbon cable will have a speckled red edge, and this edge MUST correspond to Pin 1 on the data connector, or the computer will not recognize your new drive.
With a SATA drive, the process is much easier. Simply plug the power connector into the drive, and connect the drive to the motherboard SATA controller using the supplied SATA cable. (Both connectors are both keyed to prevent improper connection.) With SATA drives, there is no need to change jumper settings, though you may need to update your computer's BIOS if it can't see the drive.
External Drives
If messing with motherboards is not your style, you can get an external hard drive that connects easily to your computer with a USB cable. External drives are a bit more expensive, but the easy setup and the fact that it's portable make it a good choice for some. The Iomega 33xxx series and the Maxtor OneTouch get high marks from reviewers and users, but other manufacturers such as Seagate and Western Digital make good products as well. Look for a drive that supports a USB 2.0 connection, or the faster FireWire hookup if your system supports it
Copying Your Data
Chances are, your new drive will be larger and faster than the old drive. If so, you may want to copy the contents of the old drive to the new one, and keep the old drive as additional storage. You may also opt to leave just the operating system files on the old drive and keep all user data on the new one.
For help copying your old drive to the new drive, see my article Copying Old Hard Drive to New PC.
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Check out other articles in this category:Posted by Bob Rankin on January 17, 2006 10:41 AM
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Most recent comments on "Add a Second Hard Drive"
(See all 76 comments for this article.)|
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Excellent site. More close-up photos on setting the pins for the slave and master would be useful. After reading the comments, I am still not brave enough to try and install my second HD. |
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Hi...I am using a AMD setup, running a windows Xp orpeating system. I am having some major issues installing my hard drive. The issue is that I have already installed an Operating system on a IDE Hard Drive, and am trying to add a SATA Hard Drive as a secondary Drive. However when I add the SATA drive my computer no longer recognises the IDE. Can you shed any light on this? Many Thanks. Jason EDITOR'S NOTE: If you go into Bios/Setup, do you see the drive listed there? |
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Hi, I successfully managed to add a new internal hard drive to my computer. I used a WESTERN DIGITAL 160GB. Using their software, I partitioned it into 4 parts. Everything is ok except that the existing CD ROM & DVD R/RW rom have totally disappeared from the system. How do I get them back. EDITOR'S NOTE: See http://askbobrankin.com/cdrom_icon_missing.html |
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i bought a PNY pci SATA 2 channel raid card pnp, so i could install a second hard drive in my new presario vista machine. i thought the hard drive i was installing was bad so i returned it. My pc recognizes the raid card fine and has recognized and assigned a drive letter for it once (the old hd with data on it), then i rebooted, then poof! it was no where to be found. I have taken the pc apart changed the card into another slot and put the sata cable in port 2 then back to port 1 in device manager it sees the raid CARD BUT NO HARD DRIVE. THIS IS VERY FRUSTRTANTG.. THE NEW HARD DRIVE HAS NOT BEEN FORMATED OR PARTITIONED. i will eventually format it and install another op system on it such as xp later when i get it working. It is weird that the pc found the hd once and now it wont. EDITOR'S NOTE: Does it still work with just the old HD? Or does the problem happen when both the old drive and the new SATA drive are plugged into the RAID? |
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I read all the postings but still can't figure it out. Win XP crashed on current SATA hard drive (200GB). Bought a new WD 250GB and installed WIN XP (everything OK). Added old drive, still partitioned in 2nd SATA slot. BIOS sees OK, and boot order verified. Device manager "sees" C: (new 250GB) and recognizes 2 partitions of the old drive but will not assign a drive letter. Format and re-partitionis NOT an option. How can I get the data off? Thanks EDITOR'S NOTER: Sounds like the file access table got munged. I hate to sound like a broken record, but the TESTDISK program will probably do the trick. See http://askbobrankin.com/hard_drive_recovery.html |
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i have a problem that i couldnt resolve it yet . i have 2 HDDs SATA, one is insatalled windows Xp and it is work properly , but i connect the 2nd HDD which is also SATA, but it is not recognized by the windows , I have CDR and has a jumpor which is located as a master , how can i let the windows recognize the 2nd SATA HD , and thank you |
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Hi, I have got a similar issue when trying to install the second harddrive into my computer. I have got the windows XP pro SP2 running on my 250G HDD. when I trying to connect my SATA 500GB HDD which worked fine on my vista machine to the windows XP. The disk manager showing GUID partition table (GPT) partition style and I could only see the HDD name and the size, no actions could be taken when I right click on it. the correct HDD name showing under the device manager. EDITOR'S NOTE: You probably need SATA drivers for XP. Check the HD vendor's website. |
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I currently have a computer set up for an IDE hard drive and I want to install a SATA hard disk. Can i simply buy a SATA - IDE Adapter cord to install my new SATA hard drive? EDITOR'S NOTE: You can buy an adapter to enable the connection of a SATA drive to an IDE-based motherboard. Or you can connect an external SATA drive via USB. |
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i have a new computer with a sata hard drive, can i transfer files from my old ide hard drive? EDITOR'S NOTE: Sure, see http://askbobrankin.com/copying_old_hard_drive_to_new_pc.html |
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I just followed your instructions and added a second hard drive and partitioned it into to 2 parts with XP and I found it alot easier than I thought it would be, just be sure to check and double check your jumpers and cables, The rest is pretty easy. Some BIOS's are different just keep that in mind it's a good idea to check and make sure BIOS sees your new drive as SLAVE on older models. |
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