Adding a second hard drive

[Somerville]

Hey guys,

Okay, a while back I bought a new 250gb hard drive to replace my existing 100gb one. All was well, until there were constant reboots at the 'welcome' screen, thus not allowing me to get to the desktop. This was a shame, really, as it was the only way I could get BF2 to work again.

Anyway, some of the guys who offered help on installing the new hard drive (Thanks guys, by the way) suggested using it as a 'storage' drive, or a secondary drive. Now, this intrigues me. I've already installed Windows XP Professional, but I was wondering, does a secondary drive need an operating system, or would I need to wipe it clean in order to use it to install stuff to/store files on? I say this, only because now I've installed BF2 on that drive, I kinda don't wanna uninstall it. Unless, of course, running applications off of that drive given the fact that it reboots when you do the slightest thing (apparantly it's an error in the RAM even though the hard drive I'm currently using boots up with no problems, touch wood), then would I need to wipe it and start from scratch?

If anybody's got like, a guide, or something, I'd really appreciate it - I'm kinda new to all of this!

[K8T]

Re: Adding a second hard drive

Okay, connect the drive and boot into your OS. Once you are loaded right click on My Computer and click manage. From the list on the left look for Disc Management, open up that. Now, if your hard driver is connected properly it should show up there (it should be unpartitioned space). Right click on the Drive and click format, you should want it to format at NTFS unless your using win98 which fat32 is kinda beter, make sure when your going through the wizard and assignting the drive a letter make sure its not the primary drive (Im tryping this at work so I cant really check to see if any of this works its just out of my own memory). After your drive has been formatted (like you said 250gig HDD it could take awhile). After you have formated the drive you will probarbly want todo a restart on your PC just to assure everything is good.

I hope you can understand that, if not add me to msn if you have it my address is below

kingofkings_ash@hotmail.com

Good luck :)

Edit: I just read your post another time and Im not sare how you want it set up... Im not sure what you mean but if your meaning what I think by your using the 250gig HDD and you want to use the 250gig as storage & your OS or are you bringing back the 100 for your OS?

[imported_Mrt1989]

Re: Adding a second hard drive

I asume you have SATA HDDs then you could run them RAID 0 as well. It gives a nice boost.

[Somerville]

Re: Adding a second hard drive

I was planning to use the 100gb as my main hard drive as, hopefully, that will remain stable. Then I was going to use the 250gb HDD as a secondary drive, mainly to install BF2 and other things to, because BF2 won't patch on my 100gb HDD.

How does RAID 0 work? Would I require extra hardware?

[imported_Mrt1989]

Re: Adding a second hard drive

to get raid work you need 2 Sata Drives . Since you have 250gb and 100gb i dont see an trouble.

[Somerville]

Re: Adding a second hard drive

And one question that has always bugged me, how do you change the jumper settings on the backs of drives? Or do you not need to with SATA?

[megawhompertoo]

Re: Adding a second hard drive

to get raid work you need 2 Sata Drives . Since you have 250gb and 100gb i dont see an trouble.

Look, the guy is asking for help on formatting his HD and you're tossing RAID0 out there. Baby steps, T, baby steps.

Alot of time crashes at the windows welcome screen are due to registry errors and errors with startup services.

If it was my pc, I'd plop my XP CD in the drive and do a thorough scandisk and low-level NTFS format on both drives and then reinstall windows. To make sure everything goes smoothly, here is the definitive guide to making 'puters behave:

http://www.tweakguides.com/TGTC.html

You don't have to do all the stuff he reccommends (he a little 4n41 retentive, IMHO, but if you do follow the guide to the letter, it will almost guarantee you a stable software environment).

And...then...if it's still going haywire, you could try isolating the bad sector on the HD, and some other things...

And one question that has always bugged me, how do you change the jumper settings on the backs of drives? Or do you not need to with SATA?

You look at the technical specifications sheet on your HD, and pull out the little black jumper with a pair of precision forceps (or you finger nails) and then plug it into the CS slot, the PR, or the SL, depending on whether you want your bios to pick the master (CS-cable select) or set if to the Master, or the Slave.

[Heavy552 AWG]

Re: Adding a second hard drive

CS = Cable select. Easiest way by allowing the drive to "Settle" into it's role.

PR = Primary meaning you want this drive to be the top dog if you attach any more drives to that ribbion cable those have to be SL=Slave.

SATA can all be CS, but one drive must be a master C:\

I prefer to install one drive first. Pernament Mark it C:\ on the outside and install the Windows, Internet, Security etc etc...

Once computer is settled down then I can think about the other drives and RAID.

[Somerville]

Re: Adding a second hard drive

Thanks you guys, I'll take this into consideration now - you've been very helpful =)

[Somerville]

Re: Adding a second hard drive

Uh, just noticed something guys. I got the new HDD out today and it doesn't have a plastic jumper for the jumper settings. Nor does the existing one. Help?

Okay so basically, I plugged the new HDD in and it booted up. But the problem is, Windows is using the new one as "C:\" But I want the old one to be "C:\". What do I do?

Edit: My bad. It booted up, blue screen o' death as per the new HDD when I tried to use it as my only HDD. Basically, I wanna make that secondary, and just use it for storage and stuff. I've got like, 4 SATA ports on my M/B - could it be that they're in order?

Edit #2: Okay, figured it out. Turns out I just had to change a few settings in BIOS. Now to test if I can run BF2 from the drive without lock-ups/freezes/reboots. Fingers crossed! Sorry for all the bumps!