OK good call, I would only use the tools, if something ever happened with
the HD. Like bad performance, and such, nice to have around then that's for
sure..
I'm aware of that, along with the need to initialize the drive. I wanted the
OP to obtain the utilities and instructions from the HDD manufacturer. The
utilities normally contain helpful diagnostic routines also.
Here's the detailed procedure from Western Digital for an IDE drive &
Windows XP:
Adding a Second Drive:
1.. Make sure your drive is identified on the boot up screen.
2.. Access Disk Management by first clicking on the Start button.
3.. Select Run.
4.. In the text box type diskmgmt.msc and click OK
5.. When Disk Management opens, a wizard may appear entitled: Initialize
and Convert Disk Wizard.
Note: You must use this wizard to write a Signature to the drive
otherwise, the drive will not work with Windows XP. If the wizard does not
appear, you may need to manually complete this process following the steps
below:
1.. Right click on the name of the drive to be initialized. (Drives are
numbered as follows: drive 0 being the boot drive and drive 1-3 are all
other drives. For CDs, the first CD is CD 0 the second CD 1 and so forth.)
2.. Choose Initialize from the menu that appears.
3.. The next screen shows the drive you selected to initialize. Make
sure the drive is checked and click Next.
4.. You will have the option to convert the drive from basic to dynamic
storage.
Leave this unchecked and click Next.
5.. Click Finish
Partitioning/Formatting:
Note: In two separate windows, on the right side of the screen, a graphical
representation of the partitions on the installed drives will be displayed.
The top window is for viewing a drive's status, capacity, and file system.
In the bottom window, you will see a representation of the drives in the
system starting with the boot drive (drive 0). In almost all cases, you will
want to work with the bottom window.
1.. Once the disk is initialized, right-click in the unallocated space.
2.. Click on Create Partition from the menu.
3.. A new wizard will appear: Create Partition Wizard. Click Next to
continue.
4.. On the next screen select either Primary or Extended Partition and
click Next to continue.
5.. You may assign a drive letter that is not in use by other devices if
you wish, then click Next to continue.
6.. Select the type of format (NTFS or FAT32). Leave the allocation unit
size at default and label the drive as desired.
7.. Enter the desired partition size. If using FAT32, your partition
cannot be larger than 32GB.
8.. Click Finish when done.
