Re-installing second hard drive

[WETHEPEOPLE]

Hello,

First a short history. 6 months ago I built my first computer. Everything was fine until I came home 1 day to find the computer would not boot up. After talking to a few people I found out it was the motherboard.

I purchsed a new motherboard but it was not the same make and model. As I switched the motherboards I left everything else untouched(i.e. HD, RAM, Sound card, etc.) When I booted the computer after installing new board. Everything seemed to be working fine until....

I tried to install a video game and I get the install shield error. I next try installing other software/games and always some type of install error came up.I spent a week researching how to fix this problem. I tried everything I was told to do. NOTHING worked. I could not even format my hard drive because It wouldn't run my win xp cd.

I finally just went and bought a new hard drive. Everything works great now. My question is this. I want to put the old hard drive in the computer along with the new one. I'm afraid that if I do this whatever was causing the install issues will corrupt the new hard drive.I have never ran 2 hard drives and really have no idea how to even hook 2 hard drives up.

Do I piggy back the hard drives or is there another way to do it? Also will the bad data/files on the old hard drive some how "seep" into the new one? Any input would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you

 

[NeoExtreme]

Set the second hard drive to be a slave,the seepage issue should not be a factor as you will just access the drive like opening a CD,it just posts the files and as long as the boot.ini resides on the master drive there should be no problems.To set the drive to salve just follow the jumper settings on the back of the drive.

 

[WETHEPEOPLE]

Neo,

Thanks for the help. I have another question. I connect the old hard drive to the same IDE cable as the new one? Also do I just delete everything on the old hard drive or can I now reformat since my cd rom is working correctly?

 

[NeoExtreme]

Your IDE cable should have two connections at the end,so you can connect both drives to one cable.If you wish to delete or just reformat the drive,since it is not the master,formatting can be done by disk management or right click the drive and select format.