Storage World

If you’re comfortable tinkering with your PC a little, you may be able to install an internal drive in your system yourself. Here’s what you need to do:

1. Make sure that you are not carrying a static charge when you touch anything inside your computer.
Touch something else that’s metal before you start, to discharge any static electricity. Don’t work near anything that might give you a charge, such as carpeting under your fuzzy slippers. If your environment is static-prone, you can buy an antistatic wristband from an electronics store and wear it while you work.

2. Turn your computer off, turn the power switch on the back of the machine off, and unplug it.

3. Remove the side panel of your computer so that you have access to the inside. You will probably have to unscrew pegs that are holding it in place on the back of the computer case.

4. Look in the front area of the computer, and locate the currently installed hard drives. Unscrew and pull out the hard drive enclosure if necessary.

5. Put your new hard drive in an available space in the enclosure, and secure it with the screws that came with it, in the same manner as the other drives.

6. Connect one end of the data cable that came with your drive to the drive, and the other end to the appropriate connector on the motherboard, the main circuit board that all of your computer’s components are attached to. If you’re not sure where to connect
it, get a flashlight and look at the labels next to the existing connectors for a label reading “SATA”.

You can also probably find a guide to the motherboard on the manufacturer’s Web site. The manufacturer’s name and a model name will appear on the board.

7. Look for the cable extending from the computer’s power supply. This is the big box with the switch on the outside that you turned off before you started. Find an unused SATA power connector along the cable, and connect it to your drive.

8. Put the side panel back on, plug the computer back in, switch the power on, and turn your computer on. The drive should appear when you look in Windows Explorer.

The process is the same for older computers that use IDE drives, but the connectors look different. However, it’s more common to encounter problems installing hardware in older machines; if you don’t feel confident about your ability to troubleshoot if something goes wrong, don’t do it.

Tags: hard disk

If you’re out of space on your system, it’s time to add a new hard drive to your PC or just reconfigure an old one. There’s no real need to set up even the largest drives into multiple partitions anymore, as the system BIOS can address all the storage in one partition. However, partitions can still make for good housekeeping, and you might consider creating a separate partition for any network shares you’d like to make, for storing drivers and software installation files that you plan to reuse and want easy access to.

Or you may wish to use one partition to install the operating system and critical apps and another for your data files, which will simplify backup tasks. Here’s how to go about it.

Partitioning as you install Windows
Use Windows Setup’s partitioning system to set partitions appropriately as you go through the process. Format the partition(s) with NTFS. After you have installed Windows, copy any data you need from the original drive to the new one. You can then retire the old drive or clean it off for use as additional storage.

Partitioning under Windows
To set up a new or existing drive in Windows, go to Start > Settings > Control Panel, and click Administrative Tools >Computer Management >Storage > Disk Management. Your drive should appear; new drives will show as unformatted space. Partition the space by right-clicking in the unformatted area and selecting New Partition; then, to format each partition, right-click in the partition and choose New Logical Drive.

Copious third-party tools offer options to ease partition management and disk maintenance. Norton PartitionMagic and Diskeeper 2007 Home can streamline the operations if you’re uncomfortable working with Windows’ tools. Users with lots of PC upgrade experience can save some dough when they add a new drive by buying it bare. Such a drive works well if you’re not planning to use it as a boot disk or if you intend to install Windows fresh.