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99279
June 29th, 2014 20:00
How to Add a 2nd HD as the Primary Hard Drive with an OS, YET make my current HD, as a 2nd Hard Drive.
Hello,
I have a Dell Inspiron 530 (Core2 Quad with 4 GB Ram - Win Vista Home) with a 500 GB SATA Internal HD and would like to replace it with a WD 1TB SATA Internal HD and add an OS (Win-7 - 32bit). Hopefully, that should not be much of a problem, Yet, I would like to use my current 500 SATA GB Internal HD, that I am replacing, as a (the) 2nd Internal SATA Hard Drive. Years ago, two (2) different Internal Hard Drives were set as Master and Slave. Any ideas on how to make the switch to the larger 1TB SATA HD, install an OS on it, and then install my previous 500 GB SATA HD as a 2nd internal HD? Thank You very much for any help!
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jackshack
6.4K Posts
1
June 30th, 2014 10:00
You can leave the 500 GB drive as is if you wish. The System Setup has a menu item, boot order, that determines which device gets tried first when you start the system. Most Dells made before 2012 make this easy for you, because if you do not have a RAID actually running in the machine, the hard drive boot option is limited to SATA 0. That is why your boot hard drive must be attached to that port. The OS sitting on your 500 GB drive will not even be looked at, although it is possible to set up the boot files on the SATA 0 disk so that you can boot the OS on the second drive. Multi-boot systems work like that, and if you wanted that option, Windows 7 setup would even configure it for you.
I have Windows XP on the SATA 0 drive in my XPS 410. I bought a second drive, booted the Windows 7 dvd, and directed setup to install Windows 7 on the second drive. When my machine boots, a message pops up giving me the option to boot either OS. Make no mistake, though, if the drive on SATA 0 fails, you cannot boot from the second drive all by itself. The initial boot files are still on SATA 0.
jackshack
6.4K Posts
1
June 29th, 2014 23:00
It is not a problem at all. Just remove the 500 GB drive and plug the new 1 TB hard drive in its place. Use the Windows 7 installation disk to install Windows 7 to your new hard drive. When you have completed the installatiion, you can plug the old hard drive into just about any available SATA port.
One note of caution: Some Dells have trouble with hard disk drives that are attached to SATA ports of a higher number than the optical drive (DVD/CD ROM). To avoid that problem, I moved my DVD/CD drive to the last SATA port on my machine, which is SATA 5 on an XPS 410.
EDIT: I forgot to mention that if you do not wish to keep the files that are already on your 500 GB drive, simply use Disk Management to delete the old partitions, create any new partitions you want, and reformat the drive.
24682
3 Posts
0
June 30th, 2014 05:00
Thank you for the answer! Sounds like it will work :emotion-1:
I noticed the 'EDIT'. I was going to ask about hooking up the 500 GB Internal SATA HD, as a 2nd internal HD, YET, it would still have the original OS on it, that it is running on right now.
I was not sure what the CPU would think when the 1TB SATA HD has replaced the original 500 GB SATA HD with a new install of an OS (for example, win-7), and then the computer notices a 2nd HD (the 500 GB SATA HD that I replaced) and it has an OS (win-vista) on it, whether the computer would read from the 1TB or the 500GB HD.
Using F2 or F12, to determine the boot order (sequence), I could by-pass the 500 GB SATA internal HD, therefore, boot first from the 1TB SATA HD? Then use Disk Management to re-format the entire 500GB SATA HD? (That is what I am planning on)
I have already backed up everything from the 500 GB SATA HD, to an external USB HD.
Great Tip about the SATA ports! I was not aware of such a problem that some Dells have.
24682
3 Posts
0
June 30th, 2014 16:00
:emotion-1:
THANK YOU :emotion-1:
EXCELLENT information ! GREAT Answers, just what I needed to understand (and possible options) before replacing my current primary SATA HD, and making it the secondary HD.