Tips on installing my new HDD 2TB?

kona786

kona786

kona786

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I have just bought a Western Digital WD20EARS 2TB Internal HDD.

It will be used as a secondary HDD - my primary is a WD6400AAKS.

Do i just plug and play? Im running XP SP3 and i might like to partition the drive in half, not sure yet - which is a decent program to do this?

Also should i run a program to make sure there aren't any defects/ bad sectors on the hdd?

Anything else i should do?

cheers.
 
kona786 said:
I have just bought a Western Digital WD20EARS 2TB Internal HDD.
Click to expand...

Woo

Do i just plug and play? Im running XP SP3 and i might like to partition the drive in half, not sure yet - which is a decent program to do this?
Click to expand...

Yep, hook it up to your PC. When you load into Windows it will see it right away. You can partition it through Windows. Right-click on Computer then click Manage. Under the Storage heading you will see Disk Management.

Right-click on the 2TB disk and click New Volume. Choose the size etc and then send it to do it. Repeat with any free space if your first volume was smaller than the disk.

Also should i run a program to make sure there aren't any defects/ bad sectors on the hdd?
Click to expand...

I am sure something like HDTune can check this, though never done it myself.

Anything else i should do?
Click to expand...

For the love of god make sure you are formatting the correct HDD! :p
 
Cheers SiriusB.

Now I've heard i need to run WD ALIGN tool to make this HDD run properly in XP.

When and how exactly do i do this. Just after i've installed and partitioned the hdd?
 
Yes you will need to use it - the jumper is only an option if you are only going to have one big partition.
I've partitioned and formatted mine on a win7 system, which does the correct alignment automatically, so have never had to use wdalign, but gather it should be run after partitioning.
 
Actually it would appear the jumper is only if you intend to install XP to one big partition. Otherwise it isn't required at all even if you have one partition as a secondary drive.

It would seem you partition and format the drive how you want it, then run the WD Align tool.
 
SiriusB said:
Actually it would appear the jumper is only if you intend to install XP to one big partition.
Click to expand...
I think we're saying the same thing about the jumper.

SiriusB said:
Otherwise it isn't required at all even if you have one partition as a secondary drive.
Click to expand...
I'm afraid I don't quite follow what you're saying here - as far as I knew, the 'rules' for using wdalign were the same on secondary drives.
 
It was rather late last night! Re the second point, I meant the Jumper isn't needed if it is a secondary, but yes you still need to use the tool.
 
You made a lot more sense than I would have at 03:36 ..:D Sorry if it came across as being a bit picky, BTW - not the intention!
 
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