Help installing second SATA drive

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Oliver

80 posts

Master Geek
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#39282 11-Aug-2009 19:14

I have a HTPC set up with a 500GB hard drive, connected to SATA1 on the motherboard. I have just bought another HD (same model and size) which I want to connect. The mobo has four SATA plugs, labelled 1 - 4. (Maybe 0 - 4, can't quite remember...)

I want to know if the installation of the second drive will be as simple as just plugging it into SATA2, connecting power and formatting it? Will it need to be set up in the Bios? It wont be used to boot from, just as extra storage. The existing drive has a lot of data on it already so I want to be sure I don't lose the existing data by accident!

It's an ASUS M2N68-AM PLUS mainboard:
http://my.asus.com/products.aspx?modelmenu=1&model=2822&l1=3&l2=149&l3=642&l4=0

And the drives are both Western Digital 500GB:
http://www.ascent.co.nz/productspecification.aspx?ItemID=377880

Thanks!

Dingbatt

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#245362 11-Aug-2009 20:49

Yes you should be able to plug it in, connect the power cable and boot up your system. In the POST it should show it recognising the new drive. Then depending on your OS it will recognise and install any drivers required. If your system has partitioning/formatting software you can hook into that.

That is certainly my experience with SATA drives.

“We’ve arranged a society based on science and technology, in which nobody understands anything about science technology. Carl Sagan 1996

Asmodeus

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#245530 12-Aug-2009 11:31

Also (sorry dont know how experienced you are with this) you'll probably need to go to the Disk manager to initialise and format the drive before you can see/use it

Right click My computer / Manage / Disk management

EDIT: use "quick format" or you'll be there for ages...

Oliver

80 posts

Master Geek
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#245534 12-Aug-2009 11:35

Thanks for that I'm pretty new at this so will do that. Will install it this afternoon and see how it goes

Oliver

80 posts

Master Geek
+1 received by user: 1

#245734 12-Aug-2009 18:15

Thanks for the help, all done with no problems. Good thing I knew about the Disk manager otherwise I would have had a panic when it didn't show up!