Adding 2nd hard drive

[dmclone]

I want to add a second hard drive to my new Vista PC. It's an Asus PB5-E motherboard which currently has a 300gb SATA HD. I want to add another internal HD just for backing up my pictures, songs, etc. I don't want/need any raid configiration.

What do I need to do once it's installed. Format? How?

[Steve R Jones]

Plug it in...Turn on pc....Click Start->Run and type DISKMGMT.MSC

Right click on the drive and select Create Partition.

[dmclone]

What if I have no need to partition? Cna I just plug it and start using?

[RealBeast]

A new drive must be formatted -- you have no choice. Just do like Steve said and you will be fine.

[kujoe2002]

What if I have no need to partition? Cna I just plug it and start using?

If you are thinking about partitions, you should try to figure out what you want to put where with your HDD. You can partition your HDD after you have formatted it thru disk management. I have several internal HDD's and I use almost all of them for data storage. Here's the config I setup for 250 and 500 GB HDD's

250 HDD
DOCUMENTS: 20-30GB (depending on what data you have)
INSTALL FILES AND DRIVERS: 10GB
MEDIA/AUDIO/VIDEO: @210

For 500 just double the size of the DOCS and DRIVER/INSTALL FILE PARTITIONS.

I would recommend partitioning the smallest sectors first.

[dead2me]

Edit* answered my own question