Thread: Concern for Configuring Additional SATA Hard Drive?

I’m planning to add a new Seagate 300Gb SATA Barracuda to my existing Dell Optiplex merely to increase my storage capacity. The operating system is XP Pro SP2. The present primary drive is a very alike to Seagate but limited to only 40GB. It also appears to be operating well so I have not decided to alter it at the present.

I consider that when the extra drive is added, the XP operating system from the primary will be formatted the added drive for accessing the files with the help of XP, but as I've never added a hard drive before to my PC (only replaced one, years ago with a much older operating system) I’m also not aware that how this works.

My first question is:

Will the XP operating system of the primary do this or will I require a different utility to do this formatting?

My second question is:

In the future, if I come across a failing of primary drive, then will I be able to add a boot sector to the newer, larger capacity drive, install XP and then set it to become the primary drive? Or would I require to totally reformat all the new drive from the scratch to boot and install XP on that drive again (losing all the files including in the process)?

I would be interested as well as grateful of what any of you have experienced as far as configuring the extra hard drives and what are the restrictions. Thank you, in advance, for your reply.

No, once you have added a new drive the BIOS will identify that you have a new drive and boot from whichever is been configured for booting it up first. Your 40GB hard drives will first boots up. Once XP is loaded, it will then find out your new 300GB hard drive and you can now access to all the contents in it. NO formatting will be done to your new drive. Yes, you can simply do that. If you desire to install XP on your new hard drive, then firstly boot up your XP installation disc by setting your CD-ROM to boot up first before your hard drive (get into your BIOS settings by pressing DEL or F1 or whatever your BIOS requires and then look for "Boot Priority" settings).
Once you've booted it from the CD, the installation will then ask you finally which hard drive you'd like to install XP in. Also confirm that you have chosen the right hard drive since if you choose your old one by mistake, your settings and files will be gone! Once you’re all set you can reset the "Boot Priority" settings and select to boot it up from your old or new hard drive.

I wasn't expecting such a quick response so thanks for providing me with detail of my posted concerns! The BIOS set-up is also outlined to load and boot XP on the new drive appears to form that a new version of hard drive "automatically" reserves a sector for booting purposes. Is that correct? If it doesn't, then how can I am sure that the boot information wouldn't overwrite the files that are there in it when it was only being used as a substitute for storage drive? In that similar way, when XP is installed in it, will it install "around" the pre-existing files? I'm also related that if this suddenly takes place, it may be important to archive all the files on CD/DVD before changing it to the primary and then re-loading after install. (Of course, I also consider about the using of the 300Gb sub drive fairly aggressively, so this would also wish to have a lot of back-up discs, for defeating the purpose for installing the 300Gb HD in the first place... trying to get away from the burning piles of discs which will be actually discarded)

You are most welcome! Yes, I believe each of the drive reserves about 8mb's or so for that purpose. That reservation is in fact a small division so it can't be more harmed by your operating system. When you select a particular division for installing it in your operating system on which you'll have the option to select between the small, reserved partition, and the second, larger, untouched division. If you were to install an operating system on a division with the current files, the installation would also replace all your registry settings, windows files, and your documents too, making it appear to have a clean installation. Yeah, I would also make certain back-up CD's if there isn't so much of data to burn. Or else, I'd recommend you to install the Windows on your new drive while still preserving your old drive as your primary drive. Then boot back into your old drive and copy all your files to your new drive from it. That way if your primary drive fails you can always boot up to your new drive with no issues!

If the old hd is Seagate you can download free the Acronis Disk Wizard 11.08 from Seagate site. With this you can make a boot cd wizard to clone the old into new hd.
Then you can left the old and user like addtional storage.

If you want to keep the old like primary hd, the Acronis DW helps you to particion and format the new hd.