How to Make an External Slave Drive

External hard drives allow you to store files separately from your internal hard drive. External drives usually act only as a storage or backup device. Many users upgrade their hard drives by keeping the operating system on their internal hard drive and installing programs and storing files on their external hard drives. This is also known as a slave drive. The process of making an external slave drive takes only a few minutes on most operating systems.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

1. Connect the USB cable from the external hard drive to an available USB port on your computer.

2. Allow your operating system to automatically recognize the external hard drive. A message will appear stating the system has recognized new hardware and is trying to install it. If the drive isn't recognized or can't be installed automatically, proceed to Step 3. Proceed to Step 4 if it's recognized automatically.

3. Insert the disk that came with your external hard drive and install the software and drivers on the disk. The installation wizard will vary based on the manufacturer of the drive. If there is no software, go to the manufacturer's website to download the latest drivers. This can found in the "Support" section of the website. The web site will vary based on each individual manufacturer.

4. Copy files to the external hard drive and install any programs on the drive that you want. There are no jumpers to change on an external hard drive. External hard drives are set to slave by Plug N Play instead of jumpers.

Tips & Warnings

• Select an external hard drive with ample storage space for all files and programs you wish to move or install. You can determine the correct size by adding together the size of files. Select an external hard drive that's at least 10 GB larger than what you need to provide room for expansion later.
• Don't uninstall or delete any files from your main hard drive until they've been successfully copied or installed on the external slave drive.