new hard drive advice

[busDriver]

Hi all, I'm going to try to put a new hard drive in my system because I need the extra space, but I'm a bit nervous....never done it before! I want to keep the old one and have the second one just for storage.


At the moment, I have a hard drive as Primary Master, a CD Rom as Primary Slave, and a DVD writer as Secondary Master.
The OS is XP pro.

Some questions; 1. Will it be ok to add the new hard drive as Secondary Slave?

2. I'm worried about power supply,how do I check it and what do I need?

3. Will XP auto detect the drive and do the bios settings etc?

4. How do I format the drive?


Thanks in advance.....x.

[Budfred]

1. I would make it Primary Slave and put the 2 optical drives together on the same cable.

2. What power supply do you have. I believe hard drives run off of the 12 volt leg, so it has to have the amps to cover. If you have a high quality power supply already, you will probably be fine.

3. If your BIOS is set to autodetect, it will do so without WinXP getting involved. The drive needs to be set up by the BIOS before the OS can do anything.

4. You can format it from WinXP.

Depending on what you have for your hard drive now, you may want to consider making this one primary. New drives are often faster than ones that have been around more than a year or so and speed is more important for running programs than for storage.

[killercow]

If you are going to copy cd's from the CD to the CDRW drive you will want to arrange it like this

Pri-master - your surrent HDD with windows
Pri-Slave - CD
Sec Master - New HDD
Sec-Slave - CDRW or DVDR,RW,RAM or what ever the writing drive is.

This is because transfering information from drive to drive is faster on seperate channels. If you see there it will work out if you are copying or burning from the hard drive. If your cables don't reach or it doesn't matter to you just follow what Budfred said.

[busDriver]

Many thanks for your replies.

I will want to copy CD's direct to the writer, so I guess I'll have the optical drives on seperate channels, but I'll also want to write from the new hard drive. Would that be ok? The writer and the hard drive will be on the same channel.

How do you format from XP, is it just a couple of clicks?

How can I check which power supply I have? I can't find it in Device Manager.

Budfred, I think I'll just add the new drive and keep the old one as is, because I just bought the new one for storage, even though it is faster. And if I were to replace the old one, I'm not at all sure how to do it. I might consider it if its very easy.

Thanks again...x

[Deagle]

To check your powersupply wattage/rating you'd have to open up the case and look at the specs sheet printed on it. That's the quickest and easiest way that I know of.;)

[Budfred]

If your system is reasonably recent, you don't have to put the optical drives on separate channels. It can take slightly longer to record with them on the same channel, but it is often better to go through the hard drive anyway (record to the hard drive and then to the CDRW) and that is done automatically if you set it up that way.

To switch you system to the newer drive is usually pretty easy. Most drives come with utility software that will copy the whole system to the new drive, you would then reformat the old one and use it for storage. Western Digital or Maxtor usually both come with a nice set of utilities and diagnostic software for their drives.

If you use the new drive for system, you would use the utilities from the hard drive maker to set the drive up... partition, format.... then you would use its transfer utility to move the contents of the old drive intact. You could then use the new drive to reformat the old one. In WinXP, you can do this from Windoze Explorer just by specifying the drive and choosing format. Just like formatting a floppy... There are other ways to do it as well, but that is one of the easiest...

Deagle is right about the power supply, I don't think you can figure it out without looking at the label. Note the total wattage and the amps available for each leg of the power.

[rond36]

If you are going to install the new drive as slave to your old drive you may need to change the jumper on the old drive to master with slave or cable select.

You can partition the drive in Win XP by going to control panel-->administrative tools-->computer management-->choose disk management in the left pane-->right click on the new drive (disk 1 unallocated space) and choose new partition. The new partition wizard should start just follow the prompts and complete the wizard.
http://rond36.8k.com/images/disk.jpg
I know, it has a few bugs but it works most of the time. Like the 220MB of unallocated space at the end of Disk 0 on my system.

To format the drive go to "My Computer" right click on the drive and choose Format. You will need to do a regular format because the quick format will only work on a drive that already has a file system.

[busDriver]

Thanks to all for your kind help. The new drive has not arrived yet. When it does I'll be back to double check exactly what to do. I'm still not sure whether to make the new drive master and dump the old one, or just add the new one.

Thanks again....x

[busDriver]

ok, I've put the new drive in as secondary slave and can see it in device manager, but it is not showing up in 'my computer'. What do I do next.

Cheers.....x

[Budfred]

You have to format it before you can see it in My Computer. If you want to partition it, do that first and then format it. As I think has already been said, you can do that from within WinXP.

[busDriver]

Thanks Budfred. I don't need partitions on the drive, so I guess I just need to format it. But how do I do that from within XP? I've never done this before.

[Budfred]

I think there are 2 or 3 different ways to do it, but I don't have a copy of WinXP handy to check. One way, I think, is to open Windows Explorer and select Format from the Tools menu. I think it then offers you the option of which drive to format, including any new ones detected by the system. You may also be able to do it from Device Manager and I believe there is a system manager kind of tool that provides the option as well.

Someone who is using WinXP will be along soon to fill in the blanks if I am remembering it wrong.

[rond36]

Originally posted by busDriver
Thanks Budfred. I don't need partitions on the drive, so I guess I just need to format it. But how do I do that from within XP? I've never done this before.

You do need a partition on the drive!

You can't format a hard drive without at least one partition on it!

The partition will not show up in Windows Explorer or "My Computer"(so that you can format it)until you create it in Disk Management. The instructions for creating and formating partitions is in my post above.

[busDriver]

Ok, it's done!!! Wow!!! I've got so much space!!!

Thanks for all the help. This is a great site. It's so nice to know that there is help out there.

Keep up the good work chaps....x