Can I just plug in a new HDD and windows will detect it, and I can start storing stuff on it or is it more complicated? I've never tried it before but am In need of a new one very soon!
If its the second hard drive then you just have to format it, windows or dos should do it for you. If you want it to replace the primary drive then get a programme like ghost or pq drive image.
depends if it has a valid partition on it, if you have bought it new then in all probablility you'll have to create a partition uisng FDISK and then format it, (which incidentally can be done within Windows (not sure on which versions) HTH
Firstly, this is a hardware question tbh so I've moved it into this forum To use your hard drive you must first plug it in correctly, using the correct master/ slave jumper settings depending on where you are going to plug it into. The ribbon cable will look something like this in terms of layout: ||=============||=====|| The left hand connector (shown as ||) will be in the motherboard end, the middle one is the slave connector and the one on the right is the master. Whichever one of these you will connect the drive to, the jumpers on the back of the drive (labelled) will need to be set correctly. This make sense, I presume you know how to do this? (but I'm just saying so you are sure sorry if this sounds a n00bish explanation and is unnecessary, but just felt best to explain properly in case you'd never done this before...) To use the drive you will need to partition and format the drive. Depending on what operating system you are using this will vary, so what OS are you using? Once we know this we can tell you how to partition and format the drive so you can use it (saves me typing out the way for XP/2K/NT and 9x/ME separately which can both necessitate a length explanation if this is the first time you've done it!)
That isn't actually true. You can use any connector on the IDE cable for either the motherboard connection, slave or master. The only time when it matters which connector you use is when you set the drives to Cable Select (CS). In this configuration you simply set both drives to CS instead of Master and Slave, and then depending on which connector you connect the drive to the drive is automatically assigned as Master or Slave without changing jumpers.
Go to start -> settings -> control panel -> administrative tools -> computer management. Then on the left hand side of the menu you will see under Computer management an option called 'Storage'. Click this, then on the right hand side you will see an option called 'Disk management'. Double click this. Then on the right you will see a list of all the HDDs and optical drives you have plugged in, their size, and their file system. Chose the required disk (will probably be listed as unallocated), chose new partition then follow the on screen instructions, choosing file type (NTFS), the drive letter you want it to be, and the sizes of the partition and so on. Follow it through to the end and you should end up with a useable, partioned and formatted drive that can be seen and used in Windows Explorer/My computer.
