2nd hard drive installation

[Bubba]

I tried to install a second hard drive via a USB eternal enclosure setup. I got a used/working pull hard drive for this. When I hooked it all up, XP listed the external hard drive in the Device Manager under disk drives,,,,,, but it did not show up with a drive letter, in my computer. So,,,,,,,, I took the hd out of enclosure,, and hooked it to the mid point of the ide ribbon  that  went to original hd [ set 2nd mid point hd at slave ] Still no 2nd hd in My Computer.  So,,,,,,,,,,,, I took original hd out of pc,,, hooked new hd to end connector,, set to master, and just did a format/install of xp on the new drive,, it installed fine. So,,,, I took the new hd back out,,,, put original hd back in pc,,,,,,,, put new hd in enclosure,,, hooked it all back up, and now the new enclosure hd shows up in my computer. Geez,,,,, isn't there a better way to do this rather than load  the complete operating system on the second drive ?  But, I could not access the new drive any other way,,,,, could I ?

[Mark H]

I've never had a problem with what you described.

[Bubba]

First,, I thought the new/used hd was no good,, but it did display as connected in the Device Manager,,, but as mentioned not in My Computer. Then I thought since it was "used" it just had the drive contents "deleted" or something,,,, was not Formatted or whatever correctly. Since I got it recognized now,,, can I F-disk,,,, or remove the XP folders and stuff form the drive, and still let it be recognized by My Computer ??

[Mark H]

You should be able to format the drive since you wouldn't be running Windows from it.

Mark H

[pat]

Sounds like you don't have anything important on the drive, so just use the disk management tools found in the control panel under administrative tools to format the drive.