How to Add a Second Hard Drive to a Computer

Series Summary

Computers are complex machines built upon very simple principles. They perform arithmetical operations millions of times over to transform digital information moving at lightning speed into usable human data. A personal computer's job is to help a user create, manipulate, deliver, receive or delete media content. This is a simple, sterile definition that sounds uninteresting on the surface. Nevertheless, these fundamental functions mimic human ability in some surprising ways. Therefore, the computer is increasingly becoming an engine of the imagination, a platform for the digital life. In this free video series on computers, computer specialist James MacGregor demonstrates several tips for upgrading and repairing computers. MacGregor explains how to add a second hard drive, change a hard drive, buy RAM, add memory, buy a motherboard, choose an external hard drive and even how to buy a printer cable. These steps are important for maintaining and enhancing the components of a particular computer. MacGregor also discusses other computer topics, such as: how to clean an Inkjet printer, pinter heads, a CD-ROM drive, a keyboard and even how to clean up laptop spills. Watch these free videos and learn to upgrade and repair a computer today.

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name's James, I'm a hardware training coordinator at InterConnection. Today I'm going to be showing you how to add a second hard drive. On the computer we're working on here, as you can see has both a Serial ATA Hard Drive and IDE Hard Drives, we'll be adding a secondary IDE cause back at home that's probably what most of you guys have. On this particular computer, we have a removable tray for the Hard Drives, so all we have to do is unplug the existing Hard Drive. Make sure you remember what connectors go where, so you might want to leave them out like this or something, cause you know you don't want to be putting it all back together and just have a mess on your hands, so. Now that the Hard Drive is free we can slide this whole tray out, as you can see this one happens to have a fan on it. What we'll do here is just undo this little connector, and now our Hard Drive is free. Once our Hard Drive is free, we have our existing Hard Drive, and our new Hard Drive. New Hard Drive as you can see is IDE, so there's all of these little teeny pins, it has a power connector, it has a jumper setting. These two you plug something into, and this is just something to set basically, how the computer views the Hard Drive. And, also you need your IDE cable, this connects the Hard Drive to the computer. The first step is you take your tray, you're going to insert your Hard Drive into the tray, you want to line up these screw holes with the holes here, so we're just going to push it back a little bit, there we are. One thing to keep in mind, these screws are made out of steel, this Hard Drive is made out of aluminum. You can over tighten these screws and strip out the holes in the Hard Drive, so they don't need to be really tight. I notice my IDE cable is going to go right here, now if I install this Hard Drive, it might be hard to get to. This typically, right here is going to go to the Motherboard, so this plugs into the Motherboard right here, and these two are going to go to you know, one drive, two drives, so I'm going to plug this right in. Now keep in mind these all pretty much have an index right on them, this is to help aid you insert it, so it's not upside down. Alright, we have that installed, kind of put this aside, install the Hard Drive in. Now, when you're installing this IDE cable, it's very important you have all of these tiny little pins, be very gentle when you're installing these, otherwise you can bend them and then it's a nightmare to straighten them back out. Put this back in, next thing, we're going to plug the Hard Drive in. So now, we go for our power connectors, now you've installed the Hard Drive. So, once again I'm James McGregor with InterConnection, I hope that helped you."