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To most people, just opening up a computer makes them feel completely lost. Mention adding a second hard drive, and it's all over but the shouting. Hard drive installation really isn't that hard-I promise. All you need to do is follow a few easy steps.
Step 1: Buy the hard drive
Of course, the first and probably most important step in installing a hard drive is buying the drive itself. What you need will vary according to how you will use it. For most people, an 10.2 GB hard drive running at 5,600 RPM will do the job. Increasing the capacity obviously allows you to store more on the drive. Increasing the RPM (to either around 7,200 or 10,000 RPM) will make the drive run faster and can dramatically increase the performance of your computer. The primary hard drives on the market today are UDMA 33, UDMA 66, and SCSI. Most of the lower- to mid-end hard drives are UDMA 33s. For most people this type of drive is fine. If you want greater performance, you can move to UDMA 66 or SCSI, which allow more data to be transferred at one time, but this comes at a price. Additionally, UDMA 66 only works as a primary hard drive for Windows 98, and your motherboard must support it. In this article, we will discuss the installation of a UDMA 33 or a UDMA 66 drive (IDE drives) as a secondary hard drive; however, most of the tips here will apply to installing it as a primary too.
Step 2: Back up, back up, back up!In most situations you will not lose any data if you are simply adding the hard drive as a second hard drive, but bad things can happen. You wouldn't want to chance losing that novel that you have been working on for the past three years would you? Back up your most important documents on floppy. If you have a tape or high-capacity drive you might opt to back up the entire contents of your hard drive.
Step 3: Install the DriveThe first thing that you should do is take note of any numbers located on the label of the hard drive. You'll need to know the number of cylinders, heads, and sectors. For any IDE-based hard drive, you should be concerned with:
On the drive, there should be jumpers labeled "Master, Slave, and Cable Select (or CS)." If you are installing the drive as your primary hard drive, or if it has its own IDE cable, choose Master. Otherwise, select Slave. Cable Select sometimes works on newer motherboards that support it. This allows the mode to automatically be set by the computer, based on how it is positioned on the IDE cable. The drive should easily mount (with the screws that came with the drive) in any of your 3-1/4" drive bays (the small ones). Many drives also come with mounting kits for 5-1/2" drive bays. Once you have the drive screwed in, it is time to attach the cables. On the IDE cable, there should be three plugs. One plugs into the motherboard, one to a primary device, and one to a slave device. Hook up the cable based on what you chose when you set the jumper on the hard drive. Make sure that you align pin 1 of the cable (indicated by a red line) with pin 1 of the connector on the hard drive. Note that sometimes only pin 2 is labeled on the hard drive. Pin 1 is in the same place as pin 2. Now find an open power cable, and plug it into the drive. That's it! You're done with the physical installation. Close the computer case.
Step 4: Adjust the BIOSMost of the time, the new BIOS will automatically detect and install the settings for your hard drive. If it does not, then the best thing to do is look in your computer's manual and find where the settings that you need to change are located. The numbers for those settings should be listed in your hard drive's manual.
Step 5: Format the driveWhen you start Windows, it should start normally. It may show the "New Hardware Found" wizard, but most of the time, it will not. If you open up Windows Explorer, you should be able to see your new hard drive in the listings. In some cases, you may need to partition the new drive using fdisk. (The instructions should be found in the hard drive's manual.) The last thing you need to do is to format the drive. Find the drive in Windows Explorer, right-click on it, then click Format. Make sure you choose the correct drive, or you may end up erasing something important.
Step 6: Install and downloadNow you're ready to start installing your applications and surfing the Web in search of cool downloads. Have fun with your new drive!
If you'd like to share your experience with installing new drives, please post a comment below, to comments@kjp-ltd.co.uk
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