Intalling a New Hard Drive

[Energizer Bunny]

Hello All,

Quick question if I may (I've searched, and whilst there is a myriad of info out there nothing seems to fit my specific issue)

I'm close to filling my 250g drive and need to invest in a new HD. I'm running Vista 64, and want to add one of the new Seagate 1tb drives so that I dont have to worry about a new disk any time soon. However, I'm curious about what exactly I need to do to go about installing the thing.

I'm completely comfortable with physically installing the drive, but I'm wonder what I need to be doing on the hardware side of things to get it working. To be clear I want my Windows installation to remain on the existing drive, so I'm looking for the new drive to effectively sit in the background and be accessible via file manager etc.

A few questions then (all very much on a theme)
- Will the comp recognise the new drive automatically, or do I need to get bios to detect it?
- Once that's achieved, will it just automatically make the new drive a slave and let it sit to one side?
- Do I have to start messing around with Raid stuff if I have no need of doing so?
- Finally, will I need to format the drive, or will Windows just recognise a big clump of space in another drive and allow me to start dumping stuff onto it?

Any and all help much appreciation.

Cheers chaps

EB

 

[Foxery]

Originally posted by: Energizer Bunny
A few questions then (all very much on a theme)
- Will the comp recognise the new drive automatically, or do I need to get bios to detect it?
- Once that's achieved, will it just automatically make the new drive a slave and let it sit to one side?
- Do I have to start messing around with Raid stuff if I have no need of doing so?
- Finally, will I need to format the drive, or will Windows just recognise a big clump of space in another drive and allow me to start dumping stuff onto it?

In order:
-Yes
-Yes
-No
-Yes, most drives come unformatted. You get to choose the file system- (FAT, NTFS, or any of a hundred Unix/Linux systems. For a giant 1TB drive, be prepared to wait an hour for it to finish formatting & verifying its integrity. However, you should be able to continue working as normal while Windows does this in the background.

 

[sonnygdude]

IIRC you can also choose a "quick format" which sets up the file structure but doesn't bother clearing every sector. This will allow you to use the drive rather quickly, like a few minutes vs a few hours

 

[Foxery]

You can, but I wouldn't chance it. The full format helps ensure you won't randomly lose data right off the bat. Just leave it running while you browse the web, or go make dinner.

 

[myocardia]

Originally posted by: Foxery
You can, but I wouldn't chance it. The full format helps ensure you won't randomly lose data right off the bat. Just leave it running while you browse the web, or go make dinner.

I agree, it doesn't take that long to format a drive. BTW, it's extremely easy to add a hard drive, when you aren't wanting to migrate your Windows install. Just mount the drive, give it a power cable and a data cable, then you can boot to Windows. Here are the steps to do after that:

1) Right-click on My Computer.
2) Select "Manage" from the drop-down box that will appear.
3) Click on "Disk Management", in the lefthand pane.
4) In the bottom-most window, scroll down to your new drive, which will be called Disk 1, assuming you only have a single hard drive now.
5) Right-click on the drive, and select "New Partion", and follow the instructions.
6) Last, right-click on the drive again, and select "Full Format, NTFS". It will take ~2 hours to format, although like Foxery said, you can use your computer while it's formatting the new drive, if you want.

As soon as it's finished formatting, it's ready to use.

 

[Dean7]

Originally posted by: myocardia

Originally posted by: Foxery
You can, but I wouldn't chance it. The full format helps ensure you won't randomly lose data right off the bat. Just leave it running while you browse the web, or go make dinner.

I agree, it doesn't take that long to format a drive. BTW, it's extremely easy to add a hard drive, when you aren't wanting to migrate your Windows install. Just mount the drive, give it a power cable and a data cable, then you can boot to Windows. Here are the steps to do after that:

1) Right-click on My Computer.
2) Select "Manage" from the drop-down box that will appear.
3) Click on "Disk Management", in the lefthand pane.
4) In the bottom-most window, scroll down to your new drive, which will be called Disk 1, assuming you only have a single hard drive now.
5) Right-click on the drive, and select "New Partion", and follow the instructions.
6) Last, right-click on the drive again, and select "Full Format, NTFS". It will take ~2 hours to format, although like Foxery said, you can use your computer while it's formatting the new drive, if you want.

As soon as it's finished formatting, it's ready to use.

I 100% agree with your advice here. But, I just did a full format on a 1TB and a 1.5TB drive and it took a long time for both of them. I eventually got bored and just left my comp for a while and came back.

I guess a "long time" is subjective, though. To a lot of people (like me) anything that takes over an hour on a computer is a "long time".

-Dean

 

[Energizer Bunny]

Superb news. Thanks all for your responses. Exactly what I was after.