second HD on old emachines

[mac71671]

Bought my computer back in 02 or 03, running windows xp and have upgraded memory and video card. Recently upgraded to a larger HD and was wanting to add my old HD as a second. Was wondering, do I leave the OS on the second HD or can i use it blank? And being that its an old emachines, would the origonal power supply be able to handle it? Also, would doing a full restore on the main drive affect the second drive?

[usually_quiet]

If you have moved your data to the new drive or backed it up, and have installed your OS and applications on the new drive too, you could reformat the old one. That is what I have done in your position.

You could do a Google search for "power supply calculator" and use one to determine whether or not your old PSU provides enough wattage. On the other hand power supplies are one of the things that are most likely to fail on an older, inexpensive system. You'll have to decide if it is worth replacing the power supply to squeeze a little more use out of that system.

My current system is almost 8 years old now, and replacing the PSU was something I looked into. I determined that for me, putting more money into it was not something I wanted to do. I'm building a new computer instead.

[ranchhand]

U/Quiet's suggestion is good; if you don't want to bother reformatting, just unplug the power cable to your HD, install the new one and format & install XP. Once XP is up & running smoothly, set the old one to Slave, plug in the power cable again and boot. It will come up as a slaved drive letter in Explore and you are on your way.

[hech54]

U/Quiet's suggestion is good; if you don't want to bother reformatting, just unplug the power cable to your HD, install the new one and format & install XP. Once XP is up & running smoothly, set the old one to Slave, plug in the power cable again and boot. It will come up as a slaved drive letter in Explore and you are on your way.

What?

[redwudz]

The older Emachines had a bad reputation for failing power supplies. If it uses a standard size power supply, I would probably replace it if it's the OEM one. It's likely large enough to accommodate a second HDD as is as they don't really use much power. A simple test is to feel the heat coming out of the PS exhaust. If it's warm like a hair blow dryer, best to replace it. PS failures can sometimes destroy the MB and the entire PC, so are very important to keep a PC in good health.