Buying a second hard drive

LordHungry

Reputable
Mar 31, 2015
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Hi, if you buy a second hard drive, do you have to remove everything off of your first one? I was thinking about getting a second one but i don't really want to get one if you have to remove everything on the first one.
 
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So, you can ignore my last paragraph about cloning etc. When you install your second HDD unit and Create the New Simple Volume on it, it will appear in My Computer as another storage drive with its own letter name. For example, if you currently have your one HDD as the C: drive and one optical drive as the D: drive, the new one probably will show up as a new drive called E: .

You should be aware, however, that Windows already is set to place many files in existing places on your existing C: drive. For example, anything that goes into My Documents or My Pictures, which are just existing folders on the C: drive, will continue to go there. You always have the opportunity when storing files or reading them to tell the system to place those...

Paperdoc

Polypheme
Ambassador
The answer depends a lot on what you plan to do with this new HDD.

Before going further, though, you need to be aware of one factor. All Windows versions by default will try to use any HDD in a particular way (called MBR Partitioning) that limits the maximum size of the HDD used to 2 TB. Beginning with Vista and Win 7, they also have the option to use an HDD larger than that under a different method called GPT Partitioning, but you have to tell it to do that. MORE importantly, if you actually plan to do this with a current Windows and a drive that large, your mobo BIOS also needs to have a feature called UEFI support, and you may need to set up this feature in BIOS Setup when using a drive that large. This applies no matter which way you plan to use your new drive (see below).

IF your plan is to continue to use your old HDD normally, booting and running from it, etc., and then only use the added second HDD unit for storage and retrieval of data, things are very simple. You can just install the second unit in your machine (I am assuming you have a desktop machine with enough space and connectors inside to do this) and then use Windows' utility Disk Management to Create a New Simple Volume on it that does NOT need to be bootable.

On the other hand, IF your intent is to replace the older HDD with a new larger one, there is more work to be done, but there are good tools to make it easy. What you need is a utility called a cloning program. Using that you can make a complete copy of your old HDD's contents to the new HDD, then remove the old HDD and connect the new one to the same mobo port as the old one was on. When you boot up after this, everything will look and work exactly the same, except that your C: drive will have a lot more space. At that point you also will have a spare HDD (your old one) that can be used for stuff. If this is the path you plan, post back here for a few more tips on cloning and drive replacement, and where to get cloning utility software.
 

LordHungry

Reputable
Mar 31, 2015
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4,510

I just want it for extra storage and im not replacing it, if i do get the second one, will it show up as two hard drives on my computer or just one big hard drive?
 

Paperdoc

Polypheme
Ambassador
So, you can ignore my last paragraph about cloning etc. When you install your second HDD unit and Create the New Simple Volume on it, it will appear in My Computer as another storage drive with its own letter name. For example, if you currently have your one HDD as the C: drive and one optical drive as the D: drive, the new one probably will show up as a new drive called E: .

You should be aware, however, that Windows already is set to place many files in existing places on your existing C: drive. For example, anything that goes into My Documents or My Pictures, which are just existing folders on the C: drive, will continue to go there. You always have the opportunity when storing files or reading them to tell the system to place those files somewhere else - for example, in a new Folder you create on the E: drive called NewDocs, or Drawings, or whatever. If you actually want the entire My Documents Folder of the C: drive to be moved to the new E: drive with all its contents, you can tell Windows to change where the My Documents folder is and then copy all your old stuff from one drive to the other.

Similarly, many of your software (for example, a graphics program of a spreadsheet) applications have their own internal ways to specify the default locations where its files are stored, and you can change those settings.
 
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