so is it just a case of plugin it in? so would the second HD be like an overflow for the first one? what happens when installing programes or saving stuff,would you have to specifi which hd to use? are there any performance problems? cheers
I think it is just a case of pluging it on another IDE cable but do some research first. It would not overflow onto the HD you are using now. You would have say drive C (your current HD) and Drive D (your new HD). Then you could specify which drive to save to. You would also have to format the new hard drive to a file system (example FAT32). If the new HD you are buying is better than your old one (which it probably is) it would also be advisable to put you operating system on the new one. Simply because you would have faster access to the disc. Hope this helps.
It's even recomended to have two hard drives. This way you can save all the information on your backup disk and even if system craches, you still have your saved information.
And its not only a question of plug-in. Be carefull with jumper settings. The hard drive to use for operation system should be set to MASTER and the second drive must be set to SLAVE. Jumpers are found on the HD itself, just see the pictures about it on the disk.
most motherboards have two IDE connectors, these can have two drives on them, ie. cd drive , dvd drive, hard drive and zip drive, any combination of the two. You can have 4 hard drives in a pc but then no cd/dvd drive would be able to go on the IDE cables. An IDE cable has two connectors for drives and one connection goes to the motherboard. As Sputnick mentions, you need to set Master and Slave status by moving the jumpers in the back of the drives (where the cables go into the back of the drives) Remember 4 drives max unless you get an ATA card and then you can have more. My suggestion, get a big drive (min 120Gb with 7200rpm)
