How to Add a New Hard Drive to Your Computer in 8 Steps

8: Format the new drive

Close the machine, power it up and configure your new drive using the Windows XP drive administration tool. To do this, click the Start button, open the Control Panel, Switch to Classic View, click on Administrative Tools, click on Computer Management, click on Disk Management. (For Windows Vista instructions, click here.)

Look at the graphical area in the bottom right of this display. Disk 0 is your original hard drive. Disk 1 is the new hard drive. Chances are that the new drive will not be initialized , or formatted. Click the small button to initialize the drive, and then format it as an NTFS volume (right click on the new drive, then click “Format...”). Formatting may take an hour or more, so be patient.

When the formatting is done, you are ready to use your new drive.

For lots more information on hard drives, computers and more, check out the links below.

How to Add a New Hard Drive to Your Computer in 8 Steps

8: Format the new drive

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