Advice on adding a second hard drive

Shortie · Post by **Shortie** » 2005-01-29 09:44am

So my mum dumped her old computer, but I rescued the HDD, thinking that a few extra gigabytes couldn't be bad.

I've opened the case up, and found a spare power connecter, I've bought a 3-connecter dual drive IDE cable, and I've made a boot-disk.

Is there anything else I need to prepare? Is there any advice you guys can give me?

Rye · Post by **Rye** » 2005-01-29 11:22am

Check the jumpers (the little fiddly black or white things that go over 2 pins at a time in the section next to the IDE pin bit) are correctly configured, there's usually a sticker on the hard drive to tell you what order you want them in.

DaveJB · Post by **DaveJB** » 2005-01-29 11:44am

Are you using Windows 2K or XP? If so, then that shouldn't be any problem, but if it's Windows 9x, it'll force it to have the drive letter D. And if that's the same letter as your CD/DVD drive, you could be in for a world of hurt.

CDS · Post by **CDS** » 2005-01-29 01:07pm

My advice is to see what other bits in there you can grab - got any more slots for some RAM or such?

(I never throw out tech... never know when it'll come in useful)

Shortie · Post by **Shortie** » 2005-01-29 02:49pm

DaveJB wrote:Are you using Windows 2K or XP? If so, then that shouldn't be any problem, but if it's Windows 9x, it'll force it to have the drive letter D. And if that's the same letter as your CD/DVD drive, you could be in for a world of hurt.

It's '98 2nd Ed. And yeah, I've got a CD drive on D:. Will it not just re-name the CD drive to E: ? Obviously that'll mess with some short-cuts, but not that many (he says hopefully).

Rye: Yeah, there's a little diagram on top, and I've finally remembered to change that now. Does it matter which order I connect them with the IDE cable?

CDS: Unfortunately the rest of the box is gone now. OTOH, RAM isn't really a problem for what I'm doing with it.

Terr Fangbite · Post by **Terr Fangbite** » 2005-01-29 02:55pm

I remember windows 98SE with the two cd rom drives we had. I installed from one cd drive and found I couldn't play the game in the other cd drive because the drive letter was wrong. Sigh, I wish I could say I missed those days.

DaveJB · Post by **DaveJB** » 2005-01-29 04:17pm

Shortie wrote: It's '98 2nd Ed. And yeah, I've got a CD drive on D:. Will it not just re-name the CD drive to E: ? Obviously that'll mess with some short-cuts, but not that many (he says hopefully).

What problems you might have depends on whether you're playing any games, or anything else that requires you to insert the original CD. If it does bugger up any paths, you can try either editing the registry, or reinstalling the game/app in question.

Shortie · Post by **Shortie** » 2005-01-29 05:51pm

DaveJB wrote:
Shortie wrote: It's '98 2nd Ed. And yeah, I've got a CD drive on D:. Will it not just re-name the CD drive to E: ? Obviously that'll mess with some short-cuts, but not that many (he says hopefully).
What problems you might have depends on whether you're playing any games, or anything else that requires you to insert the original CD. If it does bugger up any paths, you can try either editing the registry, or reinstalling the game/app in question.

That should be okay, since I haven't actually got any real games installed at the moment.

While I'm asking, anyone got any advice on cleaning the insides up a bit? I've got rid of most of the dust, but it's still not exactly spotless in there.

CDS · Post by **CDS** » 2005-01-29 06:01pm

Shortie wrote:While I'm asking, anyone got any advice on cleaning the insides up a bit? I've got rid of most of the dust, but it's still not exactly spotless in there.

Some computer places sell pressurised cans of air that can be used to blow away dust

Shortie · Post by **Shortie** » 2005-01-30 04:20pm

CDS wrote:
Shortie wrote:While I'm asking, anyone got any advice on cleaning the insides up a bit? I've got rid of most of the dust, but it's still not exactly spotless in there.
Some computer places sell pressurised cans of air that can be used to blow away dust

Yeah, but that's like expensive. I was hoping for a cheap-ass way.

Anyway, I've put the other drive in, and it works. Which is nice. Once I've cleared it properly then it's backing-up time.

CDS · Post by **CDS** » 2005-01-30 04:24pm

blow... hard