Additional Hard Drive

Choice

Choice

New Member
Hi,
My PC is running low on memory and i was thinking of adding a spare harddrive. Both drives are 7200 rpm. Will this be ok?
What is a raid controller and is it essential?
If i install the new drive do i need to change BIOS?

Thanks guys.
 
u need more RAM not hardrive if you are running low on memory.

raid is good if your pc can use it.
 
HUH? My C Drive is low on space.

Do i need a certain motherboard to be able to use this. Both hardrives are paralel ATA?
 
no no no, sorry this is for my other computer (btw i havent even finished getting parts for my sig computer).

Any help?
 
i was just discussing this issue with someone else about having two hard drives in their system. They said that when they turned on their system, they could choose which one to run on. After a while one of the hard drives started to malfunction so he took it out. then when he turned on the computer with only one hard drive, it still gave him the option of which one to use.

i'd definitely look for other sources of the problem before deciding on installing the 2nd hard drive because it could cause complications

and btw... get them specs up so we can analyze your situation
 
Specs
Pentium 4.- 2ghz
Mobo: Asus P4S333VM
224mb ram DDR (spekteck brand?)
Windows XP Professional
Current hardrive: Paralel ATA 40gb- 7200rpm
Video Card: MX 440 (pci)

Hardrdrive looking to install: Parallel ATA 20gb- 7200rpm
 
so you want to install a RAM similar to the one u have in there already but it's half the gb size?

i still dont think that's such a good idea... what about if you could find a larger gb RAM and just use that one instead of having two of them. do they make Parallel ATA RAM that exceed 40gb?
 
Ram?? this is a hard drive. 40 gb ram- I wish

And im want to put it in because its just lying around.

Please any help
 
Choice said:
Ram?? this is a hard drive. 40 gb ram- I wish

And im want to put it in because its just lying around.

Please any help
Click to expand...
Yea you can use the drive, set it as a slave, after installing just format it if your using it for storage, then it will show up as another drive--if you install a OS on it, thats when you get the duel boot option. I have a 80gb as my main drive and a 250gb as storage
 
BrandonL said:
i was just discussing this issue with someone else about having two hard drives in their system. They said that when they turned on their system, they could choose which one to run on. After a while one of the hard drives started to malfunction so he took it out. then when he turned on the computer with only one hard drive, it still gave him the option of which one to use.

i'd definitely look for other sources of the problem before deciding on installing the 2nd hard drive because it could cause complications

and btw... get them specs up so we can analyze your situation
Click to expand...

When you install 2 OSs it creates a dual boot, boot loader, if you take the second drive out the boot loader still pops up asking what OS you want, it has no way of knowing you took the drive out. You either fix the loader or go into your startup an recovery and change the boot option
 
do you have to configure the boot loader to work as a dual loader or does it automatically read the second one? and after you take the second one out... i dont get why it would stop reading something that's not there.

"computers are so nieve"
 
BrandonL said:
do you have to configure the boot loader to work as a dual loader or does it automatically read the second one? and after you take the second one out... i dont get why it would stop reading something that's not there.

"computers are so nieve"
Click to expand...

Say you have a hard drive with 2 partitions with 98 on the first one and you install XP on the second one, it will automatical fix the boot loader to give you the option to boot to either on startup, nothing to do with the {bios}. If you reformat the second partition and remove XP it still will give you the duel boot option because the boot loader is not like, I guess you could say, it does not search for the drives, all you have to do is go into startup and recovery, pick your default OS and uncheck display OS
 
o0o ok. i understand now.

well, just on a quick note, today i tried to hook up my old hard drive to this computer and run it because it said i needed to reinstall windows. so i did that and it said that the disk space was too small for the disk download.

i guess that the hard drive was too old to accept the new WinXP data. i was so pissed.
 
BrandonL said:
o0o ok. i understand now.

well, just on a quick note, today i tried to hook up my old hard drive to this computer and run it because it said i needed to reinstall windows. so i did that and it said that the disk space was too small for the disk download.

i guess that the hard drive was too old to accept the new WinXP data. i was so pissed.
Click to expand...

Just format it and use it for storage
 
but the 2nd hard drive was running on windows 95 and there are components missing that will keep it from running on its own. so my question is, would it still be compatible with the XP hard drive on a different system?

and if so, how would i format the hard drive for storage?
 
BrandonL said:
but the 2nd hard drive was running on windows 95 and there are components missing that will keep it from running on its own. so my question is, would it still be compatible with the XP hard drive on a different system?

and if so, how would i format the hard drive for storage?
Click to expand...

http://www.infohq.com/Computer/installing-second-hard-drive.htm

http://www.driverzone.com/guides/hd/install/hdinstall_p1.html

http://compreviews.about.com/od/tutorials/ss/DIYSecHD_3.htm

http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=1778

http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000413.htm

http://www.qsl.net/g3pto/two_drive.htm

http://www.hardwarecentral.com/hardwarecentral/tutorials/31/2/
 
Hopefully this helps you out, if you have 1 hard drive with an OS on it, go out and buy another IDE hard drive, set it to slave, install it, load windows, format it, there ya go! It should only ask you what to boot from if you have an OS on both drives, otherwise it will automatically load the one with the OS.
 
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