I could use some help with installing this hard drive

[jimflint1]

I got a used hard drive from a relative that he was getting rid of because he upgraded. It's a 120 gig ide drive, and right now in my pc I have an 80 gig ide drive. I guess what I want to do is clean the 120 gig drive, and install it, maybe use it for storage, or maybe use the 80 gig drive for storage--I'm not sure which would be best, nor how to go about doing these things. I know how to physically install the drive, but how do I set up the drive and wipe it clean and all those things? What's really the best thing for me to do considering that I'm running out of room on the 80 gig?

 

[hellokitty[hk]]

Well, first you should physically install the drive and go into your BIOS and set your boot drive (the 80 gb) as master and the 120GB as slave put that is complicated and is probably unnecessary unlesss windows refuses to boot.

Anyway, you would just plug it in, open my computer, right click on the 120GB, and click format to erase everything if you got the drive just after being pulled out, as in, already partitioned and such, You would format to NFTS and leave all settings on their default, though you can check quick format.

 

[jimflint1]

Thanks. I just realized that I should've mentioned I'm running XP. Is there any thing specific I need to know about the way XP handles installation of extra hard drives?

 

[hellokitty[hk]]

Not really, it should be pretty straight foward. If more than one extra hard drive shows up, then the are partitions of the same physical harddrive, if your going to format, you should format those sections too.

 

[jimflint1]

Thanks, HK! I appreciate the help.