Ok, nice easy question this time. I think I know the answer, but I just want to check.
Can I add a second hard drive to a existing computer, simply by plugging it in, and slaving it?
I have a existing computer that is running XP, and a dead computer full of files, that was running XP as well. The old computer is dead...but full of files, and I want to get all the files out of its drive. If the old computer was still running Id just burn the files I want onto a disc. Since its dead it seems like the logical thing to do.
Kim..The man with the cute little girls name...and Frankensteins face and body.
yes. Just make sure the drive you plug in has the jumpers selected for slave. It should just show up as drive D (or what ever the next available drive letter is). Since it came for another computer, it is probably jumpered as master,
note - you probably have 2 ATA ports in your computer and each one can support 2 drives. The cable that plugs into each port usually has 3 connectors: one for the motherboard, and 2 for hard or dvd drives. Make sure that the drive you are adding isn't the same (master or slave) as the other drive on the cable. There are jumpers on the drive that select master or slave and there should be labeling in the drive about how the jumpers work.
Since you are using two hard drives that came from and run XP you should be ok. I have a computer with three hard drives and 1 dvd burner. One drive is Win95 another is win98 the last has WinXP on one partition and Ubuntu linux on a second partition. I also have the first two drives partitioned so that I can store my files on one partition and have the OS on another so I'm free to wipe and reload with a fresh copy of windows without having to worry about losing my files.
If possible, you want to connect the second hard drive as the slave on the secondary IDE bus.
The reason for this is to avoid changes in the drive letters of the existing partitions. Unless you have software that allows multiple operating systems to be used, the operating system will be in the C: drive, and this will be the primary partition of the master drive on the primary IDE bus. The operating system on the second drive will be a primary partition, but this may be asigned a drive letter of D:, E:, or F:, depending on whether drives are connected as master on the secondary IDE bus or slave on the primary IDE bus. Extended and logical partitions on the original drives will be assigned different drive letters than they originally had. The additional partitions on the added drive will probably be reassigned drive letters after the partitions on the original drive.
The files that you want to salvage can then be copied from these partitions to partitions in the original hard drive. If the CD burner is the master on the secondary IDE bus and its software is in the C: partition, it should be possible to burn the data from the second drive to CDs. XP has software for burning CDs and this will be located in drive C:. Software that was loaded in an extended or logical partition may not be operable due to the change in the drive letter of its partition.
Once you have copied the files to the original hard drive, remove the additional hard drive. The drive letters that changed when the additional drive was installed should change back to their original values and the system should operate normally.
The operating system on the added drive is not used. The file systems on the added drive must be ones that the operating system on the computer can read. This should not be a problem, since XP should be capable of reading NTFS, FAT32, FAT16, and FAT12 at a minimum.
