Added a harddrive to my computer thanks to yahoo answers but now I have a new Question.?

Question

Should I formate the harddrive and how do I move the files and programs that I want from the harddrive? And should I keep it NTFS format or format it in FAT32? Anyone that can help would be nice and thanks to all who told me how to add the drive. Thanks

Answer 1

You need to format the hard drive to be able to use it. If you are using Win98 or ME, use FAT32. Otherwise, stick to NTFS. Move your files but not your programs. You could mess things up.

Answer 2

If this hard drive you added to your computer is brand new, then yes, you'll want to format (and possibly partition) the new drive. Otherwise, it can be considered useless until you do so.

If this hard drive is one which you've used before, and it has files you would like to keep, you don't have to format it. It can remain the way it is. Although, if you have an operating system on it that you don't want to use, you may want to consider deleting that portion off the hard drive.

The difference between NTFS and FAT32 is how much security you want if you were to share your information. If you do networking and share your resources out to people, NTFS is the better option due to the flexible security options. But, if this is just a computer used at home, FAT32 is fine.

Answer 3

I'm confused about the"how do I move files that i want from the hard drive", for if it's new there shouldn't be an ything to move...now if Your talking about how to get files from the old hard drive to the new ..you simply plug the old hard drive into the auxillary ribbon in your computer....make sure you set the drive to "slave settings", for the new one will be the master..there is a little black clip on the back of the hard drives, and the new one will show you this, the new one is now the master..it should have been set..and the old ones' clip should have been moved to slave position..thus creating a drive d or e more than likely which shouldbe the old drive..now trnasfer files from the d or e drive to c drive..if the old hard drive was an upgrade, and not becuase it was bad, you can keep both drives in it...ntfs is windows xp and above..so when loading the os cd(operating system) and done a clean install, I select ntsf, byt there is still fat32 files hidden anyway to operate ms dos operations still needed...

Answer 4

If the hard drive is bigger than 32 GB then you have no choice but NTFS under Windows; I have doubt that you can run Linux and format such big drive in FAT32 the way I did.

FAT32 is a good choice if you got it. Mac OS X can't work NTFS, that's new, even Linux can read/write NTFS for some time now.

It is always bad idea to migrate installed programs from one computer to another but perfectly fine to copy document files from one computer to another.

Answer 5

Hi
You definitely need to format it.
If you're using WIN XP,please do it with NTFS.
FAT32 was old file system used in WIN 98 and older MAC OS.
If you're using MAC OS X 10.4.9 or higher, you can still use NTFS. MAC OS X 10.4.6 and lower versions doesnt support NTFS. They can only read FAT32.

Now, copying/moving of data is not an issue. Do it in simple way as you do with other data. Your new HDD will appear in My Computer as a new Drive Letter (which you'll assign),
Just Move your data to the new drives/partitions.
Cheers!

Answer 6

frst you need to make the old drive a slave drive by moving the jumper to the slave position.and make the new drive the master drive.
once done go to control panel and choose file transfer wizard and transfer the entire contents from the slave drive (whatever letter the computer gave it) to the new master drive.KEEP THE NEW DRIVE( NTFS) IT IS A SAFER SYSTEM.
Now go get yourself a snack and a drink this will take a little while for the transfer to complete.