Marykay said:
I'm not 100% sure what to do with it....
A second drive (whether a slave or not) is just disk space and is
essentially no different than space on the first drive. You can put anything
you want there: installed programs, data files, music files, vdeo files,
sound files, etc.
Some people use a second drive to backup the first drive, but I personally
think this is poor practice (unless the second drive is removable and not
kept installed). I don't recommend backup to a second non-removable hard
drive because it leaves you susceptible to simultaneous loss of the original
and backup to many of the most common dangers: severe power glitches, nearby
lightning strikes, virus attacks, even theft of the computer.
In my view, secure backup needs to be on removable media, and not kept in
the computer. For really secure backup (needed, for example, if the life of
your business depends on your data) you should have multiple generations of
backup, and at least one of those generations should be stored off-site.
I just want to take advantage of the space and with any luck improve
the performance of the whole computer.
Using a second drive won't improve performance. It just provides extra
storage space. You may be able to gain a small improvement in performance by
putting the greater part of the page file on the second drive, but in most
cases, such an improvement is likely to be unnoticeable unless you have very
little RAM.
Formatting is one of those things I wasn't sure of....
The drive does not need to have its own operating system then?
Someone told me it should, but I don't see why.
No, you need one operating system for the entire computer, not one for each
drive. The only reason to have an operating system on the second drive would
be if it were a different operating system and you wanted the ability to
boot into either of the two operating systems.
Think of a four drawer file cabinet in an office. It works fine for a while,
then the drawers get stuffed and you can't add any more folders or documents
to it. So you buy a second file cabinet, which you use essentially just like
you did the first one. It just provides extra filing space. That second file
cabinet is very closely analogous to a second hard drive.
