I would like to upgrade my computer. I want to keep the hard drive I have and add a 2nd one on to it. Does anyone know what would be involved in adding a extra hard drive.
Hi John, you can either add an External or Internal Hard Drive
External Hard Drive
Plug the external drive into your Computer. This should be easy and if you encounter problems check the manual of the external drive which will be given to you when you purchase it.
Internal Hard Drive
First make sure that your computer has an extra slot for another hard drive (This can be done by going to BIOS menu while restarting the computer. At this Menu, you will select IDE Config or Standard CMOS Settings and then change all the settings included to auto detection. After this restart the computer and after restarting it will notify you it is detecting drive, if they is none, then you can add a new hard drive, if there isn't any none, then all slots are filled and you cannot add an extra hard disk)
Secondly, Put the second into an empty slot in your computer . Then find flat ribbon cables or SATA cables and connect to main board , also find cable at the empty slot that the computer detected at restarting, it will either be primary or secondary.
Thirdly, set jumpers so as the drive to recognize if to act as slave or master. and Finally restart your computer.
Hope I was able to help.
If you want to add another internal hard drive on your computer, it won’t be hard but you need to do it properly for the second hard drive to be recognized. If you are adding an IDE hard drive, you need to configure it either as a master or as a slave. If your computer has an optical drive, the second hard drive must be set to slave.
You can change the setting by putting the jumper at the back of the hard drive to the correct pins. You can find the correct jumper settings printed on top of the hard drive. Once the jumper is set to slave, you need a ribbon cable or data cable that supports two drives.
Most ribbon cables included on the computer when you buy it has two connectors only placed on both ends, one connecting to the hard drive and the other end to the motherboard. What you need is a ribbon cable with three connectors.
The connector on the far end is the one you connect to your motherboard and the other two are for the drives. Your master drive (either the first hard drive or the optical drive) goes to the first connector on the other end and the slave drive to the connector next to it.
To put the second hard drive in the CPU tower, place it below the first hard drive so you can fit the ribbon cable properly. You need to fasten it securely on the tower with the screws. After this, you need to detect the drive in the BIOS. Start the CPU then press DEL, DELETE, F2, or whichever key is used to go to the BIOS.
Go to the drive section and detect the drives. All drives must be detected including the optical drive. Next, save the settings and exit. And that’s it. Before using the second hard drive, you need to create a partition and format it. On the other hand, if you are connecting a SATA drive, it doesn’t require jumper settings.
Just connect the SATA cable and power supply and you’re ready to go.
