Adding a 2nd (IDE) hard drive

[barefootbilly]

I currently have a 120gb SATA one in my rig, and I acquired a P3 256mb 18gb Dell from work and have no use for it. No family member to give it to either. All it has on that drive is XP Pro because I put it on there. Well, I have about 20gb worth of stuff on this computer that I don't access that much but I still need it. So I'd like to completely erase the Dell hard drive and stick it in my case for extra storage.

1. How do I go about completly erasing the Dell hard drive, all I need to do is get rid of XP, that's all that's on there.

2. Once I do that, I plug that hard drive into my case and connect everything, how do I go about configuring the bios or whatever to get my computer to recognize it? I just want it to be a separate drive, not raided together with this current drive.

 

[gerbiaNem]

Just plug it into the computer and the bios will autodetect it. After that, windows will recognize it as a storage drive. From there format the hd from my computer.

 

[barefootbilly]

um, yeah, that didn't work.

I have one empty IDE slot open after I use my floppy and cd drive. I plugged this hard drive into that spot and it managed to send my boot up process into a weird downware spiral of stuff I've never seen before and asked for a disk. It was also trying to boot from a cd though floppy is still set as the primary boot device.

 

[defakto]

You need to set the jumpers correctly on the drive most likely.

 

[Ice Czar]

look for an option like Bus Manager in the BIOS
(read the manual)
the new drive has been brought to the front of the boot order
since the other drive is SATA how the BIOS handles that varies
some are simple and you can just select the SATA whereas others have you setting the chipset to boot through IDE or the SATA controller (Bus Manager)