adding a hard drive... a few questions

[triskit]

I would like to add a hard drive to my computer, but I have never done this before, so I'll need a bit of help.

My current hard drive is a Western Digital 160 GB SATA

(WD1600YD 160GB CAVIAR RE SATA RAID 8.9MS 16MB 7200RPM, discontinued)

I would like to add another internal drive for storage, since I already have an external (nice for data transfer between my home/ college computer, but not that convenient when I want to access stuff on it).

I just want a good 250/320 GB slave drive. The old 160 GB would be the master. Would this drive work for me? Or should I be looking for something else for compatibility?

Newegg.com - Western Digital Caviar SE WD3200AAJS 320GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM

I've never purchased an oem drive from newegg, but I assume that it wont come with any power connectors or anything to connect the two drives... So what other things will I need to set this up?

any other general issues with the setup?

[atomic tofu]

the info you provided is INITIALLY irrelevant...

we will assume you have space inside your case to house the drive?
assuming your mobo has additional connectors as well?

so, now...assuming the basics that you can add and connect an additional drive...you may want to reconsider swapping the drives. Since the one you are adding is indeed faster.

sata usually does not chain off the existing drive but plugs into the mobo.

some more assumptions I will make and you can answer or not, doesn't matter but for you to check yourself...
does your mobo support sata 3? If not you can still use the new drive but not reap the higher rate, which may not matter to you anyways.
does your mobo have an additional sata connector?
does your psu have additonal sata power connectors? <-- I checked this for you and looks like this drive, from the pictures I looked at, has both the newer sata power as well as older molex power, so you should be ok...depending on what splitters you have and what your psu has free.

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/produ...05&language=en

you should be good to go though
edit: and you may or may not need a sata cable, oem usually does not come with anything except screws...and sometimes not even

[triskit]

thanks for the reply...

My mobo is a MSI K9N Neo-F socket am2. It still has 3 sata slots open. I've also got all of the necessary power connectors/adapters etc and open 3.5" drive bays. I'm not sure if the mobo supports sata3, but it isn't a huge deal to me. I really just want this for more storage that I don't have to keep separate from my computer.

I do need an sata cable... and screws if they don't come with the drive. Any advice on where to buy these things... i mean is newegg still the place to go?

Beyond that, is there a good guide to formatting the new drive/ BIOS?

its been more than a year since I've formatted a hd and I can't remember what I even did...

[atomic tofu]

newegg is still the place to go...I will think the oem does have screws. I think if you are in no hurry you can even check with newegg about it.

as for the formatting it should be a breeze, chances are it will come as fat32 and you may or may not want to ntfs it. System should see it fine.

[triskit]

cool, thanks a lot.

[Trotter]

Tofu is right. It will plug in and be fine. Windows will prompt you to format, but if it doesn't you can right-click it in My Computer and format it that way. Then you are good to go.

[carnageX]

It may not show up in My Computer, however either. The 3 OEM drives (all SATA) that I've gotten, weren't formatted at all, and were just raw. So if its like this, you'll have to: right click My Computer > Manage > Disk Management > find the disk drive > right click > format. Make sure you do a full format and not a quick format, since it's raw data.

Also, none of the OEM drives I've gotten from Newegg had screws or SATA cables. Just came wrapped in bubble wrap in a box full of packing peanuts, so you probably should get some mounting screws/an extra SATA cable just in case.