Adding a Second Hard Drive????

beatsie

Hey

Is it possible to add a second hard drive to a PC as a slave drive without formatting it?

mate of mines PC is fecked and he really needs files off it before a reinstall.

tia

Beatsie

ColmOT [MSFT]

You can add a HD to a machine unformatted, but to be able to copy files to it you'll have to format it with FAT or NTFS.

After you install the unformatted HD, go into Windows and then choose to format the drive using the filesystem of your choice.

egan007

Originally posted by beatsie
Hey

Is it possible to add a second hard drive to a PC as a slave drive without formatting it?

mate of mines PC is fecked and he really needs files off it before a reinstall.

tia

Beatsie

Yeah just put the jumper on the harddrive to slave put it on same ide cable on second socket
boot up and it will read - providing primary drive is not fat6.
if it is just convert it to fat 32 using partitionmagic.

Sleipnir

Or,

if you mean that you have a drive that already has a file system on it (i.e you can copy files to it now) then you can just add it as a slave and copy files to it.
You don't need to re-format a drive everytime you move it from one system to another.

egan007

easier again - if it's just temporary - plug out ur cdrom and plug the 2nd harddrive into that cable.

ColmOT [MSFT]

D'oh - I now see how useless my answer is!!

I never copped that you probably meant that it's already formatted, and the question was whether you had to wipe it or not! I thought you were talking about a new HD that had never been formatted.

Sorry!!

The others have answered the correct question!

beatsie

Cheers for the rapid replies people.


Yes i should have clarified.

It is temporary switch to copy files from the slave drive(from mates broken PC) onto the master drive (my PC).

So let me get this straight to avoid heartache.

By the way my PC has a CD-ROM drive and a separate DVD ROM drive

just connect the power supply to the second HD and connect the ribbon drive as well.

can someone explain what you mean by the jumper on the hard drive?

is it the little black thing between where you connect the power supply and the ribon cable at the back?

And thats it?

tia

Beatsie

jim_bob

jumper settings

here http://support.wdc.com/techinfo/general/jumpers.asp

just read the sticker on your drive to find out about your drive

beatsie

It worked like a dream gents.

Thanks for all your help

B