Fitting an additional HDD to a Desktop Unit

Now that people are using digital cameras, scanners and creating their own music compilations then maybe it's time to consider a second Hard Disk Drive (HDD), which is your storage area on your PC, as distinct from memory which is what is used for running programs etc when your PC is on.

In a desktop unit, generally speaking, there will be enough space in the internal rack to add another disk drive and the prices have come down over time.

Graphics files and music files can be quite large, depending on the format that they are stored in on your disk. A typical music file, in what is the general format of .wav, will take up something over 30Mb (30million bytes) and so you can see that a few of these on your disk will quite quickly fill it up! Graphics files are smaller, but again, if it's in jpg format it will take a smaller space due to compression algorithms used compared to say a tif (tagged image format) which is uncompressed comparitively speaking.

Before you proceed, please read the article throughout and then decide whether you feel you are capable of doing the upgrade yourself or you require assistance. If the latter then feel free to contact me, & I'll help where I can!

Having decided you want another HDD then you first need to buy one and you can buy online from the likes of Dabs and others, but beware of a couple of things. First, most of the Internet sellers like Dabs do NOT include fixing screws, so make sure you ask for them at the time of purchase! Secondly, check local prices as your local dealer may not be too far adrift when you include P&P etc and it's then easier to take things back etc locally if need be, and they'll supply the screws too if you ask them! They aren't in the pack by default as a general rule.

To fit a new HDD requires the case to be opened and if you use some common sense, it's not a difficult job, usually a case of removing up to 6 screws and for this you will need a cross head screwdriver.

Make sure you switch off the mains first!

Before fitting the drive into the machine there will be a very small link across a couple of pins to set the drive to what is known as the master. As you are adding a second drive, you need to remove this link in order to set the drive to Slave so as the PC will recognise it. If you fail to set this when you power the PC it will very possibly just sit there and appear to be nothing so be warned. Also it's nigh on impossible to remove it later when the disk is in situ, so do it now!

Locate a suitable place for the new HDD adjacent to the existing one in preference, although the actual layout etc of your machine may not allow that. If you have the manual consult that and see where the new drive should go. Having established the physical sighting, carefully screw it in with the supplied 4 screws, but don't tighten it until all 4 screws are fitted. Tthe ribbon cable fitted to the existing HDD will have a second connector on that you will use for this drive. It may mean removing the existing connector in order to accomodate the new one, depending on the internal layout.

On the drive you will also see four larger pins within a connector and this is the power connector and so look for a similar one that should be not connected at this time, to what is in your current HDD. Having located that plug it into the new HDD. It's not possible to connect the power cable incorrectly so no problems there. Occasionally the 40way ribbon cable may not be polarised although it usually is. All that happens there is the PC won't recognise the drive and the light on the front of the PC will remain on permanently. If this happens you'll have to open the PC and turn the connector round once you switch off the power to the PC that is!

At this stage you should have two connectors with their respective cables connected to your PC. Now as a rule I don't replace any covers to the PC just in case cables etc have to be swapped round. Sod's law says screw it all together and something's not going to be right!

Ensure all the other external cables are still connected and repower the PC. As soon as it's powered you need to access the BIOS and the usual way is to pres the Delete key, but consult your manual in case yours is different.

Once into the BIOS settings we need to set the Slave to Auto recognise the new HDD, and then save the settings by following the menu options. the machine will ow reboot and if you check the screen on power up you'll probably see the new drive show up.

Stage 2

Having got to this stage, we need to run FDISK and then format the disk etc.

Before we do this, just decide how many partitions you want to split your new disk into. If you've bought a decent size disk, (>80Gb) then I would advocate splitting it into at least 3 partitions of similar sizes. Keep one for data, one for graphics/photos and the remainder for your music collection or whatever.

Now what I tend to do and here we all follow and exercise what we're used to I guess, but I tend to run the fdisk command from the Start, Run line and accept the default of large disk support.

The next screen will ask whether you wish to change current drive at number 5 which you ned to select.

Ensure you select the Drive 2 at the following prompt as we don't want to cause problems with our current drive do we?

So in the line Enter Fixed Disk Drive Number (1-2), type in 2.

Follow any screen prompts now to return to the stage where it says that a reboot is required for the computer to recognise the drive and if it doesn't auto restart, then re-start the PC using the Start, Shut Down option and select Restart. On restart, the new drive will be recognised.

We could have sized the partitions at the Fdisk option but I tend to use Partition Magic, due I guess to familiarity etc., so if you haven't got it then you either need to purchase a copy, go back and resize the partitions in Fdisk or stay with one large partition and create the relevant subdirectories.

Using Partition Magic to set the new HDD up.

The software will have to be installed and then run. You will be prompted to create recovery disks and that's a choice you have to make. To be safe you may wish to exercise that option before continuing.

This allows you to re-size your drive graphically and format and label the partitions all in one screen operation and then when you press OK to continue, you may as well go and make a coffee or have your dinner. A large disk will take a longer time to complete the setup. Why not label the disk sectors logically and call the D drive Data, E - Photos (or graphics) and F - Music or whatever. The more clear it is labelled the clearer it is to use!

On completion you have a disk that you can start to move all the data etc from your single drive across. I would suggest you COPY it fist, check it and when satisfied all is well, delete the original. Copy the data to the various drives you have created and not just move it over to the first one that comes to mind!

Now if the first disk was partitioned into two, with System files on C and data on D, you can once you've deleted the files, using Partition Magic again, concatonate the two partitions into one or leave it as two and put your windows swap file on there in order to improve the execution time of your PC. There's a number of things you can do with it but just give it some thought before you jump into it!

Another useful exercise to perform now that you have 2 drives is to keep a working image file of the C drive on your other drive in one of the partitions you have created, say the Data D drive in a separate directory (or folder). Using another piece of software, like Ghost although there are others, and create an "image" file of the C drive. You'll be glad you did if your C drive dies, gets a virus hit or gets corrupted when running one of the many "updates" that come along. It'll take around 20minutes to retore your HDD rather than the days, yes days, to rebuild the drive to where you were before the crash. It's not until something happens that you rue the day you couldn't be bothered! Ghost again is fairly simple to use nowadays, having progressed to a graphical user interface and so you should find it fairly intuitive to use. I will, time permitting at some stage in the future go further into Partition Magic and Ghost if you think it would be useful and incude some screen shots.

By having two drives you can keep copies of important data on both drives and that way you'll get the least inconvenience when anything untoward happens, and believe me, it will, and usually at the most inconvenient moment in time! I would suggest that you backup your email contact (address book) list as well as exporting any important messages - see the relevant article within Hints & Tips on this subject.

Now I accept that I may have missed out things in this article, but it's difficult both remembering everything as I tend to do a lot of what I have tried to write down automatically, and just how much detail to go into before I turn you off anyway, so if any of you do venture down this upgrade path and get stuck then use the Contact Us button and I'll try t respond at the earliest to resolve any problems you have if I can!

By the same token, if there's an area you feel I need to expand, again contact me and I'll review whatever I've written to date.

Have fun!