[Fred]

I have a 3 yr old Dell w/ a 40g harddrive. I want to add a 2nd drive just to store music on. Would this be a good choice?

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...8&sku=THD-250A

What are the chances I'll have to mess w/ my bios and how do I go about it if I do? Will Windows XP help me or hurt me?

 

[matt8268]

If you have a Dell tower, it should be no problem. That drive looks like a good choice...I just added a Western Digital 300gig drive I found for about the same price.

You should upgrade your BIOS regardless, always good to have the latest version, you can get it on Dell's website, just type in your machine type on their support page.

Windows XP will help you. As long as you don't plan to use the new drive as your boot drive, you should be able to just plug it in and partition/format it directly from XP (Control Panels-->Administrative Tools-->Computer Management-->Disk Management). Hardest part may be making sure the drive's jumpers are set correctly. First set both drives to cable select mode. If the computer doesn't see both drives, be ready to switch them to master and slave (cable select is supposed to work, but I have found with my Dell sometimes it doesn't).

If you want to boot from your new drive, it's a bit more complicated, do a google search for "installing new hard drive".

 

[gshan]

No worries! Seagates are easy to install on XP. Go to Seagate's website and download the small DiscWizard program first.

Oops, see info above regarding jumpers.

Attach power and IDE cable.

Turn on the computer, and after Windows loads up you just need to run the DiscWizard program and it'll setup/format the new drive you just attached into the system.

That should do it.

 

[Fred]

Quote:

Originally Posted by matt8268 If you have a Dell tower, it should be no problem. That drive looks like a good choice...I just added a Western Digital 300gig drive I found for about the same price. You should upgrade your BIOS regardless, always good to have the latest version, you can get it on Dell's website, just type in your machine type on their support page. Windows XP will help you. As long as you don't plan to use the new drive as your boot drive, you should be able to just plug it in and partition/format it directly from XP (Control Panels-->Administrative Tools-->Computer Management-->Disk Management). Hardest part may be making sure the drive's jumpers are set correctly. First set both drives to cable select mode. If the computer doesn't see both drives, be ready to switch them to master and slave (cable select is supposed to work, but I have found with my Dell sometimes it doesn't). If you want to boot from your new drive, it's a bit more complicated, do a google search for "installing new hard drive".

Great, thanks a lot. I have to jump on this sucker before the rebate expires. Did you have to do a rebate on your Western Digital 300gig drive? Either way, where did you buy it from?

 

[terrymx]

if you want good transfer speed then look for a version with 8mb cache and 7200rpm ata133. instead of 2mb, 5400rpm, ata100. but if you are just going to store stuff and leave it there. overall not all a big deal. but i makes sure my primary harddrive is the fastest one.