[onelife]

I am running windows xp, I have a cd rom and a floppy drive,I would like to install another hard drive to this system. Can you please give me the steps the are involved in performing this. Is there anything else I need besides the hard drive to make the installation.

Thank you

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Most computers have at least two IDE channels, so typically it is pretty easy to install another hard drive, you just need to make sure the jumpers are correctly set. The first drive should be set as the master and the second as the slave. You can use the cable select, but then you need to know which position is master and which is slave since the boot drive needs to be the master.

So, the steps are to open the case, set the jumpers on the drive, mount the drive, hook it up to the IDE cable and the close the case. You should be care to ground yourself to avoid static issues and possible damage. In the best case you should have a static kit and know how to use it, but typically you can get away with touching the bare metal, setting the drive on the bare metal case, open the drive bag and install it.

The floppy does not use the same controller, so it does not affect adding a hard drive.

[Kemasa]

Most computers have at least two IDE channels, so typically it is pretty easy to install another hard drive, you just need to make sure the jumpers are correctly set. The first drive should be set as the master and the second as the slave. You can use the cable select, but then you need to know which position is master and which is slave since the boot drive needs to be the master.

So, the steps are to open the case, set the jumpers on the drive, mount the drive, hook it up to the IDE cable and the close the case. You should be care to ground yourself to avoid static issues and possible damage. In the best case you should have a static kit and know how to use it, but typically you can get away with touching the bare metal, setting the drive on the bare metal case, open the drive bag and install it.

The floppy does not use the same controller, so it does not affect adding a hard drive.

[onelife]

I am running windows xp, I have a cd rom and a floppy drive,I would like to install another hard drive to this system. Can you please give me the steps the are involved in performing this. Is there anything else I need besides the hard drive to make the installation.

Thank you

Doesn't the cd drive share the same cable as the hard drive (s)? If this is the case I won't have a connection on the cable to install an extra hard drive.

[Neil Jones]

Doesn't the cd drive share the same cable as the hard drive (s)? If this is the case I won't have a connection on the cable to install an extra hard drive.

It can do although for best performance the CD units should be on the other IDE channel, otherwise the hard drive isn't running as fast as it could.

The CD drives use the same sort of cable though and there should be another connector exactly the same usually next to it where the current one is plugged into on the motherboard.

Best thing to do:

Channel 1 (IDE1): Current hard drive (set as Master) and your new one (set as Slave).
Channel 2 (IDE2): Your current CD drive set as Master.

Edited by Neil Jones, 18 December 2005 - 05:49 AM.

[onelife]

It can do although for best performance the CD units should be on the other IDE channel, otherwise the hard drive isn't running as fast as it could.

The CD drives use the same sort of cable though and there should be another connector exactly the same usually next to it where the current one is plugged into on the motherboard.

Best thing to do:

Channel 1 (IDE1): Current hard drive (set as Master) and your new one (set as Slave).
Channel 2 (IDE2): Your current CD drive set as Master.

Thank you for your help, I appreciate it very much! I will try to perform installation now. Do I need to do anything else after I install second hard drive? Its going to be a removable hard drive which I plan on running Linux on. Once again thank you for all your help.

[Kemasa]

It is possible that both the CD and the hard drive is on the same cable, in which case you will need another cable.

Personally I would install the drives like this:

Channel 1: Boot disk
Channel 2: Second disk as master, CD as slave

But if you are going to have the second disk as removable, then it will need to be a slave unless it is the only drive on the channel.

Are you going to use a removable drive tray?

My suggestion for making a dual boot machine is to have the OS on the main disk, assuming you have enough disk space to do so. I would use the second disk for user data. You will need to partition the disk differently though, which is not too hard if you can reload everything.

My suggestion for Linux is to have a 100Mb /boot partition, a root partition of around 4Gb and the rest for user space. I don't like to have one partition too large since it makes it harder to make changes later. I would keep the main Windoze partition down to around 10Gb, with a second partition for user data. There is some issues with Linux writing a NTFS filesystem (getting better, but I have not checked recently). If you have a partition which is FAT32, then both can write to it.

[onelife]

Thank you for your help, I appreciate it very much! I will try to perform installation now. Do I need to do anything else after I install second hard drive? Its going to be a removable hard drive which I plan on running Linux on. Once again thank you for all your help.

Yes I am going to install a removable tray with the second hard drive. Will I be running up against any additional problems by doing so?

Thank you for your help!

[Kemasa]

There will be problems only if you do it wrong :-). The removable drive needs to either be a slave or the disk on the channel if it is the master (I prefer it to be the slave since I don't want to limit the number of devices).

I am not sure of why you would want to install Linux on the removable drive since that means you would need to use a floppy to boot the system unless you create a boot partition on the primary drive (which is a good thing to do in my opinion).

I like removable drives for backing up my data and keeping things that I don't always need. I don't like to have operating systems on it (other than a backup). Another thing to consider is the airflow for the removable tray. Often it is not all that good, which is another reason to use it as a short term use drive.

[warriorscot]

You dont neccesarily need a boot disk yo just need to set it up so you are prompted to select which OS to boot from.

The easiest way to set it up is to have all the OS s on one hard drive so what you want to try is getting the new gard drive in and check it works fine and run the drive manufacturers diagnostic over it in windows and get it formatted etc.. Then once you have the drive set up then checked move your data you want to keep over it, then use a disk partitioning utility to partition your old HD to have two system partitions(one for windows one for linux) then a logical partition for data, and then you install linux in one system partition and windows on the other you can then select which one to use when you boot up.

For system partitions linux doesnt have to have a huge partition 5 or 6 gig is suffucuent if you are a gamer windows partition will have to be about 40 gigs because you have to install games on the system partition for windows for them to work properly.

I use removable tray in my PC they are great, my pc has them sitting across the front instead of the normal front to back setup my airflow to the dirves is much better than it was in the older standard layout systems.
Trays are good you should use them where you can. I dont take out my drive but its handy to be able to.

If you are going to take the drive out then it should be the slave, as that way the computer will still have full functionality without it.

http://freepctech.co...e_devices.shtml this should help it looks pretty comprehensive, this is all assuming its an IDE drive SATA would be a bit different.

[Kemasa]

While you can use Lilo to select the boot device, since it writes the information to the boot block, it also means that it is harder to update for additional boot devices. Grub does a much better job, but it needs to partition to boot from (such as a 100Mb partition, which is what I suggest). If you don't want to change the default boot loader, you will need a boot disk.

I think it is best to have all the OSs on one hard drive, but I also think it is important to have separate partitions for use data so that you can reload the OS and not affect the user data. This means that you should have more than 1 partition per OS. Whiile it might seem to be a bit more complicated, there are good reasons for it and in the long term it is easier. For Linux you should also have a swap partition.

Most removable drive trays have limited air flow around the disk. Some mount the disk on the bottom of the tray, which means no airflow across the bottom. Even those that you can mount in the middle have a back piece which again limits airflow. While it is true that many systems don't have very good airflow, at least there is often space around the disk so that you get some airflow as the hot air rises. If you pack a lot of drives in there then you will have issues.

I don't think that I would want a boot disk to be a slave drive and the removable need not be a slave as long as there are no other drives on the channel. For example, if you only have one CD drive, then that could be put on the first IDE channel and then only put the removable on the second channel. Personally, I would just put both OSs on the first disk though.

[warriorscot]

Well airflow is wholy dependant on the cases setup , also a drive tray doesnt affect the cooling as they are metal and conduct the heat into the tray and cool it in the same fashion as an HS. Drive trays are usually in setups where the HDs are mounted in front across the main front fan.

Not something you have to worry about.

[Kemasa]

Sorry, but the drive tray does affect the cooling. While some are metal, others are plastic and steel does not conduct the heat away as well as alum. heat sinks (ever notice the fins and wonder why? It is about surface area).

While you might choose to not worry about it, I have worked with computers and electronics long enough to be concerned about it.

[onelife]

Well airflow is wholy dependant on the cases setup , also a drive tray doesnt affect the cooling as they are metal and conduct the heat into the tray and cool it in the same fashion as an HS. Drive trays are usually in setups where the HDs are mounted in front across the main front fan.

Not something you have to worry about.

I tried to install second hard drive but when it came to boot it listed the cd rom as a slave drive on the secondary ide channel... so needless to say I guess I have to take out cd rom and but the jumper back on master. If those steps are done properly should I expect anymore problems. Do you think a second drive is good for storing games instead of storing them on a primary drive?

Once again thank you!

[Kemasa]

Is the second hard drive set as the master now? You said that the CD was listed as a slave, so you need to make sure that the hard drive is a slave and the CD is a master. Once the drives are set correctly, you should not have a problem.

I have heard that some games don't like being off the boot partition, but I don't know the details of that. I suspect it depends on which game.

[onelife]

Is the second hard drive set as the master now? You said that the CD was listed as a slave, so you need to make sure that the hard drive is a slave and the CD is a master. Once the drives are set correctly, you should not have a problem.

I have heard that some games don't like being off the boot partition, but I don't know the details of that. I suspect it depends on which game.

Thank you for all your help! Installation was a sucess!