Hey everyone. Hoping someone can answer my question. I have an old 8.4 gig hdd that i removed from my old computer. I want to put it into my new computer to use as storage only. How do i go about doing this? Other than the nuts and bolts part that i can prolly figure out. I'm running windows XP home. I'm using an AMD athlon 2400+ computer. I have an available space for the drive. Thanks for your time.

Make sure you have an extra cable, put it into the empty space you have. Plug it in, and it will show up in My Computer. You can then quick format it and everything from there.

Dear Sam,

This is pretty easy with Windows XP. First turnoff computer and unplug it. If you have your computer open ground yourself so no static electricity hurts your computer. This can be done by touching the chassis of anything electrical. Like a metal lamp thats plugged in.

If you only have one hard drive now, you should already have a IDE connector free. Just trace the big looking plug from your existing hard drive to the empty one plug, thats the one to use.

Now you need to make the storage drive a slave to the master (your existing hard drive). This is a easy jumper setting on the back of your hard drive. Sometimes the drives are marked sometimes not. You are looking for Slave or SL.

Still can't find it. It is the set of pins right next to the power plug. Most slave jumper settings are two in looking from right to left. Look at your master setting, it should be three in from right to left.

In most cases the hard drives are grouped together, install your storage hard drive and plug it in just like the master. Re-plug your computer and turn on.

Windows will see the drive but you must go into "My Computer" and right click the new drive. Go down the list and click fast format or format.

After it's done Restart computer and viola!

Hope that helps.

Let us know,

junkdk

Thanks. I'll give it a try. I was curious about what the book i got with the computer said though. They said to set the jumper to Cable Select or CS. Does it make a difference whether it is cs or slave? Either way I want the extra storage so i'll do whatever works.

There are two different ways of setting up the two hard drives on an IDE channel i.e. sharing the same cable:

The original way used a 40 pin cable and the drives were jumpered as Master (MA) and Slave (SL).
Faster IDE interfaces use an 80 pin cable and the drives can be jumpered either as MA and SL or both as Cable Select (CS)

You need to identify your IDE cable as 40 wire or 80 wire (Normally the 80 wire has different coloured connectors). If you have a 40 wire connector you must use the Master/Slave settings. If you have an 80 wire cable you can use either Cable Select settings on both drives, or the Master/Slave settings.

hth