Newbie issues

[Heavenlyblade]

Hey guys, I have a question.. well a couple of them.. I just bought a crappy little system for like a hundred bucks and i'm trying to add a second hard drive.. I'm needing to get the thing up and running quickly for various reasons and I cannot get it recognize the second drive... Do i Wipe both drives and reinstall windows on them both? Or install only on the biggest one and let it carry over or what? (also the 2nd HDD is coming from an Emachine..)

Also.. i'm not sure how to master/slave them.. i read something in a forum post about the jumper pins.. what are they talking about? Can you help? Thanks guys.

 

[Grafficks]

You'll want your boot hard drive set on Master on the Primary IDE Channel.

Just keep Windows installed on your current hard drive, then add the second hard drive as slave. Then it should automatically be detected as another physical drive, where you can further partition it into more separate logical drives.

On the back of each drive, there are a few jumper pins that need to be set correctly.
Two devices hooked up on one IDE channel are called Master/Slave drives.
The drive jumpered as Master will be your boot drive, where your OS is installed (usually the C:\ Drive).
The drive that's jumpered as slave will be the non-boot drive (usually the D: Drive).

Good luck

 

[SNGX1275]

To add to Grafficks:
If there is nothing important on those hard drives I'd set the jumper pins to Master on the largest hard drive (larger generally also means faster because of better drive technology) and set the second smaller one to slave. On the drive label there is a diagram that shows you what pins the jumpers need to be for master and slave. Put those drives on the same IDE ribbon, doesn't matter which one goes where.

Then go ahead and install windows, during the install you will be given a choice where to install, you can format there. Be sure you read what is on screen.

You can format or not format the second drive from within Windows.