Page 1 of New hard drive advice please

Hi ,
I`m looking to buy a new hard drive to suppliment my existing one which is almost full now, my queston is though how do I link the two together. I`ve heard the phase `slave drive` but I don`t know what that means.

Any help would be great , thanks.

It depends on your pc. If you`ve got a reasonably up to date model, it`s usually pretty straightforward, (and even easier if you`ve got Windows XP).

You`ll need to open her up and take a look inside. You`re looking for:

1 - A spare hard drive bay - usually immediately above/below/next to your existing hard drive.

2 - With luck, the data cable which connects your existing hard drive to the motherboard will have an extra connector on it. If so, you can use that to connect to your new hard drive.

3 - A spare power cable to plug into the new drive, or you can get a "splitter" if you don`t.

If you have two hard drives, they`ll need to be designated as "Master" and "Slave". In your case, if you`re keeping your existing hard drive, that will be the master and the new drive will be the slave. The master is the main drive, i.e. the one on which you`re operating system (e.g. Windows) is sitting. The slave drive is mainly used for extra storage space.

You`ll need to designate which drive is master and which is slave, which means checking, and possibly altering, the jumper settings on both your existing and new hard drive. Check here for info on how to do this.

With a bit of luck, you`ll have a data cable with the 3 coloured plugs, as illustrated in the article. In that case, make sure your existing drive is plugged into the black one and your new slave drive is plugged into the grey one. You may need to swop the positions of your drives in their bay to make this easier (I did). Set the jumper settings on both drives to "Cable select".

You`ll need to format and partition your new drive, but exactly how you do that depends on your operating system. With windows XP it`s very straightforward!

I hope this helps!

I know which hard drive im getting next - an 80Gb Seagate Barracuda here - http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?action=c2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X292ZXJ2aWV3&product_uid=36369
Under £47 and look at the reviews!

Cheers guys, I think I`ll be able to do that now, my pc seems to have all the necessary cables as you stated. I was looking to spend under £50 Micoman so that deal sounds ideal, I`ll have a look.

Thanks again

Rob