Question on installing a secondary internal hard drive...

[vi5]

I opened my computer last night to install a PCI card. I noticed that running from the connection to my main hard drive (the C: drive) was a ribbon like thing. By the main drive it said "Hard Drive 1" and then ran out to a connector that had nothing attached but read "Hard Drive 2". Is that where I would connect a secondary internal hard drive? What if I wanted that secondary drive to just be a place for storage of music and video files?

[Florida_Geek]

1. yes and you wire it for Slave

I have this and backup files from one hard drive to the other and it is cheap to do.

[vi5]

3. How do you wire it to be a slave drive?

Are there other wires inside that would need to connect or just that one, and then when I run the install software it will allow me to specify slave drive or not.

[ZenLefty]

4. There should be pin settings on the hard drive

Each one is a little different, but there should be a pin configuration that designates 'master' or 'slave' for each drive. These are physical switches on the drive so small you have to use a pen to toggle them. The instructions should tell you where they're at and how they need to be configured.

Not only do you need to connect it to the ribbon, but there should also be a DC power wire running from the power source.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

6. With a modern computer...

There is generally no need for a master/slave relationship. Or leather. ;-)

Cable Select.

[tsakshaug]

2. yup

You can hook a second hard drive for files. check the manufacture about jumper settings. I did it this summer, so I have most of my music, video and photo files in the other drive, locked away from kids.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

5. A very good idea.

It can increase performance as well. Here's how.

Buy an 8Mb cache, 7200RPM drive. The performance is wonderful.

Set the jumpers on both drives to CS(Cable Select). Put the main HD on the end connector and the other one on the second connector.

Partition the new HD with the tools that come on the CD that is supplied with it. set 2 partitions on the new drive. The first should be about 2 gigs. The rest is the rest.

Then, when you boot windows, go to control panel>system>advance>performance>advanced>virtual memory. Set the page file to be on the small partition. Let Windows manage the size, at least for now.

This cuts down on drive head thrashing between the program files and the page file on the new drive. A modern IDE bus can handle the bandwidth. It really does increase performance.

http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/pagedefrag.shtml



Also, try a little program called PageDefrag. It is free. It defrags all your system files at bootup, on XP. This can really speedup your machine. I install it on every XP machine I work on. I consider it an essential.