Adding an additional HDD (IDE)

[korax5]

Hello everyone,

Situation

1) Main SSD has Windows 7 installed on it.
2) Want to add additional space and have my old HDD (IDE) that has Windows XP on it.

Questions

1) Would I have to set the IDE HDD to slave? not sure how it works with SSD.
2) Would I have to reformat the IDE HDD so that it can be accessed by Windows 7 on the SSD?

This might be a dumb question but would appreciate any help or advice.

Thanks

 

[psaus]

1. If it's IDE, the SSD has no bearing on the IDE HDD. Set the HDD appropriately for the IDE bus (e.g., if it's the only IDE drive, set it to master, if there's another drive on the IDE bus, then set it appropriately; whatever the other drive isn't).

2. You don't need to format the HDD to allow access, but if you don't need the data on that drive, I'd suggest doing it. Just keeps things clean, wipes the other boot record. Just advising for cleanliness. But you can access your data without doing that.

 

[WyomingKnott]

Does your motherboard have an IDE controller in the first place?

 

[asnorton44]

What's IDE???

 

[WyomingKnott]

What's IDE???

The previous generation of interconnect between a controller and a disk drive. It used a 40-pin parallel cable, and supported up to two drives on each cable. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_ATA

 

[asnorton44]

The previous generation of interconnect between a controller and a disk drive. It used a 40-pin parallel cable, and supported up to two drives on each cable. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_ATA

Sounds old-school

 

[WyomingKnott]

By definition, it is. But not everyone can, or wants to, go out and buy a new drive every time they need storage space, so why not recycle an old drive?