Adding a second hdd750GB

[zico]

Dear All,

Please bear with me, I bought an MSI GX660, super laptop, it has two bays for HDD, one has 500gb, and the other is empty, I bought an HDD 750gb and i plugged it in, I can see both in the setting as 500gb and 750gb, but on my computer i see a different size 273gb for the 500gb, and 177GB for the 750gb how can i fix this, in addition i want them to work separately, one for programs and the 750gb for data.

Please assist I know you guys will provide help as usual so thank you in advance.

 

[almartin]

I take it that the 500 gig drive has the operating system on it and it sounds like that the 750 gig has some files or programs on it. Go to my computer and right click on each drive and then select properties. This will show you how much free space and how much used space you have. If you don't need the data on the 750 gig drive then you can format it and start with a clean drive. Are these Sata or IDE drives?

 

[zico]

Appreciate your reply, the 500gb is divided into two sections, sorry I just found that out, 273gb & 177gb coming to 500gb, windows does not see the 750gb, but i guess the bios or the setting sees it as 750gb. It is (Seagate Momentus 7200 750 GB 7200RPM SATA 3Gb/s 16 MB Cache 2.5 Inch Internal Notebook Hard Drive -Bare Drive ST9750420AS), please assist.

 

[zico]

So how can I have windows recognize the 750?

 

[WyomingKnott]

The new drive will need to be partitioned and formatted. Please save me some typing and see here, especially step five: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/265764-32-guide-installed-disk-system

 

[zico]

Thank you very much, I will try that tonight. I am not sure if my laptop supports Raid, if I need to do a Raid 0 or 1 05 5 ...etc set up, the laptop is fast enough and has no problems with any game on higher setting now. Please give me your advice. Thanks.

 

[WyomingKnott]

Thank you very much, I will try that tonight. I am not sure if my laptop supports Raid, if I need to do a Raid 0 or 1 05 5 ...etc set up, the laptop is fast enough and has no problems with any game on higher setting now. Please give me your advice. Thanks.

That (RAID) is a horse of a different color. Setting up a RAID with the new drive will erase all the data on the old drive. In addition, if you are going to RAID them, you should buy another drive with the same capacity.

■Two separate drives: You have 1.25 TB of storage, with two drive letters.
■RAID 1: You have 500 GB of storage. The same data is copied to both. If one drive fails, the system keeps going on the other. Write speeds are about the same as with a single drive; read may be faster.
■RAID 0: You have 1 TB of storage. Read and write speeds increase. If either drive fails, you lose all the data on both, and most recovery tools can't do anything with the drives. I recommend against this unless you seriously need it.

In any case, back up to an external drive just in case.

 

[zico]

Thank you very much that was perfect worked like a charm.