INSTALLING A SECOND (OR REPLACEMENT) HARD DRIVE:
I have gotten a number of inquiries from the www.allexperts.com web site (where I am a volunteer PC consultant) on adding a second hard drive to a system (or replacing a users current hard drive). If you have a state-of-the-art PC upgrading your hard drive (and RAM), at today's prices, is a great idea (if you know what you're doing). The most important thing to be careful about here is that a lot of the hard drives on the market are not compatible with older vintage motherboards - so check out your current motherboard specs and check them against what I'm about to tell you! Here are a few hard drive upgrade tips:
HARD DRIVE PHYSICAL INSTALLATION:
It does not take a rocket scientist to install a new (or second) hard drive (or additional RAM) in a PC if you know a few `basics'.
If upgrading, the main thing to watch out for is to not buy a hard drive larger than what your BIOS will recognize (if your PC is more than 10 year old it will probably not recognize a hard drive over 20GB). Also, the newer hard drives run at a speed of 7,200 RPM - but if you have an older motherboard (UD66 or less) it will not support the faster speed. It will, however, run the new hard drive at 5,400 RPM - but you will lose the performance advantage of the 7,200 RPM drive.
First scenario is that if you are replacing your old hard drive with a bigger and faster one. If so, all you have to do physically is take out the old drive and put in the new one with the same cable connections.
Second scenario is that you want to save your old hard drive as a `backup' or something and make it a `slave' to your new super-drive. All hard drive come with physical "jumpers" on the back (or bottom) of them that you have to configure to make them a "master" or a "slave". To put them BOTH on the primary IDE cable your "boot" drive has to be configured as `master' (making it your C: drive) and your second drive as `slave' (making it your D: drive). You CAN put the second drive on your `secondary' IDE cable as either master or slave - but I prefer to reserve the secondary cable for CD drives (players, burners, & DVDs). If you have never done this, jumpers can be a little tricky (based on the brand) and I recommend you read the documentation that comes with the drive to make sure you understand it. Finally, when connecting the drives, make sure the "stripe" side of the cable is next to the power supply plug - or your system won't start up.
NEW HARD DRIVE FIRMWARE/SOFTWARE CONFIGURATION:
To `configure' a new hard drive in your system (either scenario) you first have to install it on one of your IDE cables and configure it in your system, partition and format it, and install an operating (or simple boot-up) system on it. Step 1, to configure it, the BIOS (firmware) on MODERN motherboards will normally auto-detect hard drives wherever they are installed (if they are installed properly) - but to be sure, I always go to `setup' (hit my `del' key during startup and go to "auto-detect hard drive" manually) when I first boot to see if my BIOS is, in fact, recognizing the new drive.
`Partitioning and formatting' and later installing an `operating system' can only be done by `booting' your system from a startup `floppy' diskette, a `setup' CD like Win `98 (full edition), or your old hard drive. Based on the method you choose, you have to go into `startup' and select "first boot device" to be either your floppy drive, CD ROM, or old drive "C".
The `floppy' process is best done by using the "Win 98 startup disk" you created during your Win '98 installation process (or you can create one later by going to your Win '98 Control Panel\add-remove programs\startup disk). This magical disk will let you start up your system and contains programs like "fdisk" for partitioning, "format" for formatting your hard drive, and "sys C:" for transferring your `system' files to your hard drive and making it `bootable'. Also, when using it to `boot-up' it gives you the option of "starting system with CD support" which will allow you to get to your CD player and install Win '98 (or whatever).
If you choose the "CD ROM" boot option, you must have the full version of Win '98 for it to work (but you have to have this version for the floppy thing to work also). When you use the CD to boot up, you don't have to make any prior preparations (partitioning or anything) because the CD does the whole thing and then installs Windows.
If you want to set up your new drive with the system files on your old drive, install the new drive in place of your CD player, use `setup' to make sure the system sees the new drive, and boot up normally. When you get to Windows either restart in DOS mode or go to a DOS prompt. Then run "fdisk" and partition drive "D" (your new drive). If you choose, you can split the new drive into different segments (when fdisk asks you if you want to use all space available answer "no" and specify the size for your primary partition, extended partition(s), etc.). After you are finished partitioning you will be prompted to reboot your system. After rebooting, go to a DOS prompt and "format D:, E:, etc. (depending on how many partitions you made). If you want to make the new drive bootable, type "sys D:" and `enter'.
YOU ARE NOW READY TO INSTALL YOUR PROGRAMS ON YOUR NEW DRIVE. If you set up your drive with Windows '98, XP or Vista only, you must reinstall all of your applications individually (this is recommended if your old system configuration was causing you problems). If you want to keep your old software setup, you can copy everything from your old drive to your new drive and reinstall Windows (this is necessary to update the file allocation table-FAT, etc. on the new drive). You can restore all of the stuff from your old hard drive by shutting your PC down, moving your `primary IDE' cables from your new hard drive to your old hard drive, moving your CD player cables (secondary IDE) to your new hard drive (unless you used process 3 and are already set up this way), rebooting, and going to `Win Explorer'. From there you can "tag" all folders and "copy" them to your new hard drive. From that point, turn the power off, reinstall your new hard drive on your primary IDE cable, boot from a startup disk or CD, and reinstall Windows from your CD (all of your applications programs and personal files will remain intact).
If you choose, you CAN configure BOTH hard drives to be your `boot' or `system' drive - but they CANNOT run your system at the same time. If you install a full operating system on both of them (Win 98 SE preferably) you can go into "setup" on PC `startup' and configure "first boot-up device" to be either C: or D: - and the programs on that drive will be `in control' with the other drive acting as a "slave".
IDE vs SATA HARD DRIVES: Most of what I have said up to here pertains to IDE hard drives. The newer drives on todays market are Serial ATA (SATA) drives that use different motherboard and power connections. They are faster than IDE drives and perform just as well as external drives as they do as internal drives.
If you are installing a SATA drive as a replacement drive, back up everything to an external hard drive using Norton Ghost (or equivalent), remove the old drive and put the new one in it's place, and restore your system using the restoration CD that Ghost created.
If you are installing it as a backup drive, buy an external SATA enclosure and use it like any normal USB external drive.