How Many Internal Hard Disks can I have on my PC?

Question

I want to install an extra hard disk on my computer, secondary hard drive that is and wanted to know how many internal secondary hard disks can I install on my computer, someone told me you can just install an extra one,therefore you have a primary hard disk and a secondary hard disk or slave disk but then someone told me you can have several and they got me all confused, I have been getting such answers and have no idea whether it is proper to purchase an extra hard disk, right now I have a 40GB HDD with Windows XP and thought of purchasing an 80GB or perhaps 160GB SATA Drive as a secondary Hard Disk. I also wanted to know that if I have a primary hard disk of 40GB with Windows XP,can I have secondary hard disks of higher capacity and is the RAM and Processor in any way involved in this that I cannot get extra space because other hardwares in the system don't support it. Please let me know.

Yes and one more question, most softwares,98% have this option during installation that you can choose the drive in which you want to install your software and I thought if I can have a secondary hard disk or disks, I would prefer to install my softwares that can be installed on other drives on the secondary hard disk/s and also keep all my files there, so in case my computer crashes will it in any way affect those software applications that are installed on the secondary drives and will I also lose all data on the secondary drives, or is it that when Windows crashes or Hard Disk crashes it primarily means that the primary HDD crashes and not the secondary ones and it does not affect the secondary drives and all softwares and files on it and once Windows or Linux is reinstalled,you recover all your softwares and files as they were,and softwares function normally again...do secondary drives crash as well? or it's the poor primary drive which has to bear all the brunt of crashes

Answer 1

You "normally" can only have one additional drive. With a SCSI set up, you can have up to 6 additional. Before getting a SATA make sure that is what is installed in the system now. If an older machine it may be EIDE. You can probably go with a 160G with no problem if the system is less than 5 years old. The cable going to the current drive should have an additional connector that will plug into the add-on. The pins on the end will determine whether it is primary or slave. You can install the programs on the secondary drive which will protect them from a disk failure on the primary. The only problem is the registry will see them there so if the primary fails, you will have to manually use explorer to start the programs or create shortcuts on the desktop. Need to consider what will happen if the secondary drive fails. Keep all data backed up on CD on a regular schedule to protect from loss due to failure, virus, etc.

Answer 2

You can have two under ordinary circumstances - called C: and D: With external USB drives, should be able to have more. Your second drive can be any size that the operating system allows. The RAM and processor have nothing to do with the maximum disk size the maximum is set by the space allocated in the directory for referring to the disk space - it used to be 64 megabytes in older versions of DOS, don't know what it is under FAT32.

Answer 3

i don't think of it incredibly is obtainable to apply your desktops present annoying disk as an exterior annoying disk for on your computing device. U would desire to purchase a portable USB annoyingcontinual on your computing device

Answer 4

Just buy an external Hard drive. No need to install it inside your computer, and when you eventually buy a new PC, all you have to do is unplug from your old PC and plug into your new PC.

Answer 5

just get a USB stick. it conveniently fits in your pocket which you could take anywhere. It's sorta like a mini "hard drive".

they come in different capacities and are fairly cheap nowadays.