Silly question

Andybtsn · 20 Feb 2006 at 22:13

I've bought a SATA2 hdd for a secondary hdd.

To use this is as my secondary hdd, is it ok to just plug and play, or will i need to creat a partition and install windows on it?

I'm not too sure

benjo · 20 Feb 2006 at 22:13

To run it as a slave, no you dont need to instal windows... Thats as much as i know

Andybtsn · 20 Feb 2006 at 22:14

Just create a partition?

Zefan · 20 Feb 2006 at 22:15

Just plug it in and format it in windows by right clicking ---> format. No partition needed whatsoever.

Explicit · 20 Feb 2006 at 22:33

Yeah, you dont need to install windows on it, just plug it in and you're good to go (after you format it, as described above)

Andybtsn · 20 Feb 2006 at 22:41

Zefan said:
Just plug it in and format it in windows by right clicking ---> format. No partition needed whatsoever.

Thats the weird thing, it recognises the drive in the BIOS, but not in windows...hence my question.

Any ideas?

Explicit · 20 Feb 2006 at 23:04

Are you using windows xp?

Andybtsn · 20 Feb 2006 at 23:16

Andybtsn · 20 Feb 2006 at 23:22

Also, SATA hdd's, do you still select whether there master/slave using the pins?

As my Maxtor has no instructions which pins to 'block' etc

p4radox · 21 Feb 2006 at 00:30

andybtsn said:
Also, SATA hdd's, do you still select whether there master/slave using the pins?

As my Maxtor has no instructions which pins to 'block' etc

No jumpers for master/slave

. My Samsung has one for motherboards 'only supporting 1.5Gb/sec transfer speeds' but I haven't come across a mobo that doesn't...

ajgoodfellow · 21 Feb 2006 at 00:50

You have to create a partition.

The hard drives are shipped from the factory with just a low level format to tell BIOS their size etc

Open Computer Management (Start/Control Panel/Administrative Tools/Computer Management). Click on Disk Management from the list on the left. You'll see all of your physical drives and partitions there

Partition the new drive as you wish. These partitions will then appear in My Computer allowing you to format and use the drives

There is no need to reinstall windows on the new disk

Slave/Master jumpers went out with SATA so don't worry about those

smids · 21 Feb 2006 at 03:22

ajgoodfellow said:
<snip>

Partition the new drive as you wish. These partitions will then appear in My Computer allowing you to format and use the drives

<snip>

To do so, right click the 'Unpartioned (Unallocated) space' and click Format...