Installing a Hard Drive

[Smoke286]

How hard is it to put a second hard drive in an old computer. I have an old Celeron 300 that my son uses with a 2 gig HD in simple terms can someone explain how I would go about installing a second HD?

 

[dreamliner77]

Should be pretty easy providing that 1) you have room for it in the case and 2) you have an available IDE channel. Basically, if it's not gonna be the boot drive, your best bet is to set the drive to slave and attach it as the slave drive on the primary IDE cable (middle slot on the cable). The only problem I could think of is that because of the age of the BIOS on the system, the BIOS may not recognize the full capacity of the disk. Might be able to get around this by formatting the disc straight from the manufactures boot floppy/disc.

 

[Smoke286]

Thanks, I was thinking of a used 10 or 15 gig HD. I'm presuming that wouldn't be so big as to cause problems.

Can I ask how I would set it to be a slave drive?

 

[Shrek]

Found this link http://www.perfectdrivers.com/howto/seconddrive.html from searching google, it tells you all you need to know.

 

[LeeJend]

Also, before you buy:
-See if there is a bios update to access drives bigger than ( I think it's 7 gig).
-Make sure the power supply can handle it.
-Be aware that the new drive won't be any faster than the other drive if on the same IDE port.

When you install:
-Remember that you have to format AND partition before using the drive.
-Set primary and slave with little plastic jumpers in the back of the drives.

I recommend:
-For simplicity buy the same brand drive that is in there now. Reduces risk of compatibility issues. Especially with older hardware.

PS It is easy to add a slave drive. Making the slave your primary takes more effort but if both are Western Digital their utility disk can handle it fairly easily.

 

[GoNz0]

8.4 gb was the limit on the older mobo's

 

[GoNz0]

ithink, im still on the bank holiday piss up *hic*

 

[Smoke286]

Got a good deal on a P II tower after, it was cheaper then buying a new HD and came with a 15 gig HD

 

[dreamliner77]

-Be aware that the new drive won't be any faster than the other drive if on the same IDE port.

I doubt he would've tried to put XP on that machine, but in XP that is not true.

 

[Smoke286]

The old computer a celeron 300 with 128 MB of RAM had XP on it, it worked fine, if a bit slow

 

[dreamliner77]

I stand corrected then. It is still true that XP can handle different dma speeds on an IDE controller.