What is the easiest and simplest way to prepare a used HD for use as a second drive?(novice)?

Just make sure the jumpers, if any are set to Slave on the second Hard drive when installed.

1. Once in XP, check out this link for a better alternative than Fdisk: http://www.d-silence.com/feature.php?id=246. It tells you how to format and partition your drive according to the system you want. One partition makes your drive have one letter. Two partitions will give it two and so on, making it look like two or more extra drives on your system.

2. If you want to move programs onto a directory on the second disk, you have to uninstall them from the first drive because this affects the bootup registry. You should be able to save the data separately (eg. setup files, or working files you make with the program) -- though each program has its own quirks typically. Most newer programs create a folder within or use your "My Documents" folder on C: so they should be OK.

3. To move your programs to the other drive, you need to reinstall them. Only don't do "typical" installation, you need to generally do a custom installation to specify that you would now want to place the program files on a drive other than your boot drive -- showing up likely as D:\

Hope this helps.

1)OK first of you have a HDD (hard drive disk as MASTER) this the one that hols the core of the OS

2) you need to make you SLAVE drive a SLAVE to do this you need to change the jumper setting on the HDD it self...you have 2 options

a) you can make the jumper to cable select

b) make it slave...

(once you take care of the physical task it fairly easey...)

3)TURN on the computer and GO to "my computer" to check to see if the drive is there...is so..then your good to go and make a note of the drive letter **IMPORTANT**....

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IF NOT two things can be assumed

1) you did something wrong with the jumper setting they are incorrect

2) the hard drives are incompatible meaning they cant work together

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4)close the "my computer" windows and click start

5)click on run

6) then type

cmd

7)then type

format (the drive letter c: d: e:) with the semicolon

for ex say the slave is a lettered d i would type...

format d:

8) it would say if your sure to erase all data in d drive y/n

yea type y

9)and follow the steps from there....

10)it will format and tour done the new drive will be empty and ready to use...

i do it at least 10 times a day.....hope it helps i need my sleep...12:50am

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Pretty simple,

1. Switch off your system.

2. Connect the 2nd HDD as a slave to your primary master by changing the PIN configuration on the back of your 2nd HDD.

3. Plug in the power cord to your 2ndd HDD

4. Restart your system

Your system BIOS will be intelligent enough to recognize your 2ndd HDD as a slave and will not utilise its boot partition. so when windows boots up, it will show the 2nd hard disk as a new drive in your My Computer screen.