adding a hard drive

I have an hp media center pc m260n. I was wondering if I could connect my old compaq hard drive to it so that I can get my old data out. If the compaq has a virus on it, is there a way to scan it with norton before it can infect me?

 

As long as you have a spare connector on the IDE cable then you can add the second drive, you just need to ensure that if the current drive is set to master, then other one is set to slave.
If your present one is CS(cable select) then set the other one the same way.
After you boot, you need to make sure that the system boots from the correct drive, if it starts to load the added drive, then enter BIOS a startup and make sure the correct drive is the primary drive under boot options.
After the system is up and running, just select the new drive i.e F:\ as the scan target and sit back and wait.

 

thanks for the reply bigdk. How do I find out what the cable sets are?

 

There will be jumpers on th back of the drive, and normally a digram with the jumper settings on, or use the manufacturers web site.

 

Thanks for the advice bro. Always appreciate you guys helping me out. God I love this site!!!