Got another hard drive ... so what do i do?

[diabloII]

ok now i'm using IDE only, no SATA

i currently have a 200GB Seagate, and now i got a 120GB Western Digital

soo:

1.) screw in HDD
2.) plug in 4 molex for power
3.) plug the SECONDARY part of the IDE cable into my new HDD
4.) i'm lost :\

what do i do?

do i need to format, partion, or whatever? if so, what do i do to it?

btw, this hard drive is pulled out of another computer that i don't use anymore...so what do i do?

ty

 

[HAVOC]

IDE HDD's use a Master - Slave - Cable Select Jumper. This is located on the back of the HD. You need to set this jumper to either slave of cable select and attach it to the secondary IDE connector under the master connector.

If the drive was formatted and preiously and has data on it, you should be able access that data as windows should recognize the new drive.
Although, any programs that have been installed on that drive will need to be reinstalled as to add the proper registry keys to windows and well as proper set up files.

Good luck!

 

[Elbatrop1]

Havok pretty well nailed it.

After connecting everything and setting the jumpers, boot up the computer into Windows and the new HD should automatically be detected.

Like Havok said, if it already was formatted, then it will show up in My Computer just as your other hard drive.

If you want to clean it off, just open My Computer and right click the drive and select format from the drop down menu.

 

[Nitestick]

i would reformat it anyway. but im probably borderline OCD and couldn't handle swapping a cluttered hdd into another rig. if you would like to repartition it now is the time before you get attached to anything thaqt you may put on the drive

 

[diabloII]

ok, thanks guys, but

1.) How do i partition a hard drive
2.) All i have to do is "reformat" and everything is cleared off that hdd...right?

 

[uzi9mm]

Throw the hard drive in as a slave drive.
Boot up windows xp (if you have it)
Go to START> CONTROL PANEL> ADMIN. TOOLS> Storage> Disk management> right click the new drive and partition it.


You can do this thru DOS with a bootdisk that contains fdisk.com

To access it, just type in fdisk
follow the directions after that.

 

[Mionics]

you dont need to format unless you plan to boot off of it, if you dont wanna boot from it then just format it in your operating system which under xp is done by right clicking the drive and clicking format. select full format. just like you would with a floppy

 

[Nitestick]

2.) All i have to do is "reformat" and everything is cleared off that hdd...right?

if you want to completely remove all data you will have to use something like killdisk at http://killdisk.com. but for all intents and purposes reformatting does remove everything