Installing a hard drive?

Question

so i bought a new hard drive, how would i go about installing it? im guessing i cant change it with the 1 currently in because all the window files required to run the computer is on it, or am i wrong? or if i added it as a second drive what i do for that? help me thanks

Answer 1

You did say installing it and not formatting it. To install it you must have the know how and steady hands. If you was to drop it just 2" you could damage it. A pro PC repairer told me this and you would have wasted a lot of money.

Answer 2

The easiest thing to do is to connect the hard drives together on the same ribbon cable. This might be tricky because some motherboards need the center connector of the cable connected to the motherboard, and the two ends connected to each drive. Be sure to connect the cable plugs with the stripe on pin 1 of the devices (they usually have a triangular mark or something on the drives to mark where pin 1 is). If everything is connected right, when you start up your computer, Windows will start, then click on My Computer from the Desktop screen. Two hard disk drives should be listed, or if not, click on the System icon in the control panel. Click the Hardware tab, and follow the prompts for the Add Hardware Wizard. If your computer won't boot, try connecting each drive to a cd or dvd drive you may already have installed in the case, and check the BIOS Setup at start-up to see which drives are recognized. You'll see all the drives listed on the first page of the BIOS Setup if everything is connected correctly. Ok, now-- after you restart, again check in My Computer to see if both drives are listed. Right click on the new drive and click where it lists to format the drive. After having said all that, if none of the above worked, just get an external hard drive case, and use it as a removable external storage device. They usually come with a cd that will let you format, read and write to the drive, and best of all, you can use it on any other computer that has the cd program installed on it, so you can transfer files from computer to computer easily.

Answer 3

Well ive done it a few times if you have a really old computer then you might only have one hard drive space but most new ones have 2 however laptops only have 1.
Its quite simple:
take the case of your computer and find where your current hard drive is and follow the cable down to the mother board until you find where its plugged in. All you have to do then is plug the other one into the spare port and put it all back together and try it.
However if you don't want to do it your self many PC shops will do it for a small fee.

Answer 4

There is a jumper on the back of the hard drive, the one installed currently needs to be changed from "single drive" only to "master", your new one, change it's jumper to "slave" and plug them into the same IDE cable. Plug in the power cable and boot it up. Your BIOS should recognize it and windows should as well. After you get it formated, you can always use software like Nortons Ghost, the copy the harddrive file for file to the new one, and then switch the master/slave jumpers and boot from your new one. Google search this, there are tons of guides to help you.

Answer 5

Hi, to add as a second drive you will first of all need to open your tower, then ensure that the jumpers on your new drive are set to "slave". Then fit drive into bay (usually above original) and connect using cable from IDE connector 1. This is the cable that is also connected to your original drive. Boot up your machine. You can then right click on Start followed by My Computer/Manage/Devices. This gives you an option to format your new drive and then you are ready to go.

Hope this helps

Answer 6

If you want to change hard drives you would need to install the operating system on the other drive too. If you jsut want to have two, all you have to do is open up your PC and connect it. You may also have to go into your BIOS and tell the PC that you have an extra drive...this depends on what OS you are using, and what type of ahrd drive.

Answer 7

add it as a second drive -
make sure the jumper on the back should be set to cs.
check the jumpers on the othe drive on that same cable.
if its set master then set the new to slave, and vice versa.
it shouldnt need formatting and you should get access straight away.
consider using this drive for all your media files and documents and backups. that way, if the drive with windows fails you dont loose all your stuff.

Answer 8

You need to set the original HDD as the primary master - check your HDD documentation for Jumper settings.
Set your new drive as Primary Slave again checking your docs.

Install the new drive in a drive bay and attach a free power cable and the free end of the IDE cable to the new drive. You may then need to format the new drive.

Answer 9

Most hard drives will come with software to transfer the files from the old hard drive to the new one, so you could boot off the new one. Go to the drive maker's website and download the software if you didn't get a disk with it.

Answer 10

Do a Google / Yahoo search for:

Install slave hard drive

Most new hard drives come with a utility to transfer data to the new drive. Check the drive manufacturer's web site.