How To Use Second Hard Drive For Storage Windows 10

Summary :

Do y'all know how to install a second hard bulldoze in the laptop or desktop PC? Do you know how to set up information technology in Windows x for utilize? Read this post to become a step-by-pace guide. In addition, with MiniTool Partition Magician, y'all tin can back up your information and manage your hard drive better.

Why to Install a Second Internal Hard Drive?

Many of you might similar to add a second hard drive to your computers for the post-obit reasons:

The reckoner runs out of hard drive infinite.
You just upgraded your computer from an HDD to an SSD and y'all want to install the old hard drive as a 2nd drive for economy.
The organization disk (usually an SSD) is likewise small and you want to use a 2d difficult drive for storage.

For whatever reason, you need to install a 2d hard drive into your laptop or desktop PC. If you only use the second drive to store photos, documents, etc., for convenience, you can install an external hard bulldoze.

Nonetheless, some of yous may prefer to install a 2d internal hard drive, not an external hard drive, because of the following defects you have to face when installing an external difficult drive:

The external hard drive usually takes up an extra power socket, considering the motherboard usually cannot provide sufficient ability for the external hard drive through the USB interface. Bereft power supply may crusade a state of affairs where the bulldoze can't be recognized by the computer.
The external difficult bulldoze will use up a valuable USB port.
The external hard drive usually has a slower read-write speed than the internal hard bulldoze, which will touch on your feel particularly when you call a program.

Based on the in a higher place factors, I would like to innovate how to install a second difficult drive inside the computer, instead of installing an external hard drive. To install a second hard drive, please keep reading to get the main points.

Preparatory Work Earlier Installing a Second Hard Bulldoze

Before installing a second hard drive, you lot should figure out two things: is your figurer suitable to install a second hard drive, and which hard bulldoze is right for your reckoner? Allow's explore them ane past ane.

Kindly Reminder: The improper disassembly may cause impairment to your calculator and make your calculator not boot. Please support your data first. Y'all tin utilize MiniTool Sectionalization Wizard to do that. Click here to get the detailed guide.

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Whether Your Computer is Suitable to Install a Second Hard Bulldoze?

By and large speaking, a desktop is always suitable for a second hard bulldoze or even more, because it is usually equipped with more than than one difficult bulldoze bay.

However, not all laptops are suitable to install a second hard bulldoze. Some laptops have only one hard drive bay, which means it can install only one hard drive.

Therefore, earlier you purchase a second hard drive for your laptop, you should cheque the number of the hard drive bays in your laptop.

Here is the tutorial.

Step 1: Shut downward your notebook and unplug the power cord.

Step 2: Turn the notebook over to make the lesser side up. Then, remove the battery.

Step 3: Notice the location of the hard drive, and then use a cross screwdriver to unscrew the screws that fasten the cover.

Footstep 4: Remove the cover and you will see how many hard drive bays are in that location.

Tip: If your PC doesn't have an extra hard drive bay, but it has an optical drive bay, it nevertheless tin install a second hard drive.

Which Kind of Difficult Drive Is Correct for Your Computer?

If your computer has more one difficult drive bay or an extra optical drive bay, y'all tin can decide which kind of hard bulldoze y'all want to install. Notwithstanding, to some extent, that is also determined by the hard drive bay. In general, the difficult drive bay determines the following iii factors of the new difficult bulldoze:

Interface: The socket build-in the hard drive determines the interface of the second hard bulldoze, because the socket needs to match the interface.

Here are some common hard bulldoze interfaces and the corresponding sockets for personal computers. You can check which hard bulldoze interface is right for your computer according to the socket.

1. IDE Interface and Socket

Nowadays, IDE interface is gradually existence phased out because of its deadening data transfer charge per unit. Yous can only see it in a very old computer.

2. SATA Interface and Socket

SATA interface is the most common hard disk interface now.

iii. M.two Interface and Socket

M.2 interface is a new generation interface standard tailored for Ultrabooks. This interface is unremarkably used in SSDs. Thousand.2 interface has 2 types: B key and M cardinal. B key has 5 pins and M key has half-dozen pins.

On the market, there are few Chiliad.2 SSDs with just B key. M.ii SSDs with M cardinal or B plus M keys are more popular.

If you desire to know more about M.2 SSD or SATA SSD, you can refer to the following post:

Size: In full general, laptops use 2.5-inch difficult drives and desktops use 3.5-inch hard drives. However, if the difficult bulldoze interface is mSATA, 1000.two, or PCI (these interfaces are ordinarily used in laptops), the size volition be much smaller.

Thickness: The last gene is thickness. The early 2.5 or 3.5-inch hard drives reached 9. 5mm, merely the current hard drives are basically 7mm thick. A thinner difficult drive can fit in a deeper bay. On the contrary, a thicker hard drive can seldom fit in a shallow bay.

In addition, some SSDs designed for Ultrabooks may be much thinner (these SSDs are usually equipped with an M.ii or PCI interface).

How to Install a Second Hard Bulldoze in Laptop or Desktop

Afterward you lot buy a proper difficult drive, you can refer to the following tutorials to install it in a laptop or a desktop. For those who want to know how to install a new hard drive or how to install SSD in PC, these tutorials are also worth reference.

Tip: If your SSD is an M.two SSD or PCIe SSD, which is very thin, the installation process is slightly unlike. In this post, I don't give detailed steps on how to install SSD in PC, but yous tin refer to another mail I write to know how to install it correctly: How to Upgrade the SSD in Lenovo ThinkPad T490s - A Detailed Guide.

How to Install a 2d Hard Drive in a Laptop

Step 1: In the similar way, remove the computer bottom cover to find the hard bulldoze bay.

Step 2: Utilise a cantankerous screwdriver to spiral the screws, fastening the hard bulldoze in the hard drive bracket.

Tip: The hard drive subclass is used to protect the difficult bulldoze from vibration and is generally suitable for 2.5-inch hard drives. In improver, some computers may be non equipped with it.

Step 3: Insert the hard bulldoze into the slot and screw the screws to spike the bracket (with the difficult drive in it) into the estimator.

Tip: Unlike ii.5-inch hard drives, mSATA, M.2, or PCI SSDs don't need a hard drive subclass. To fasten them, yous merely need to spiral the fasteners at the terminate of the SSDs.

Step 4: Remount the bottom panel of the laptop and screw the fasteners.

Further Reading:

You can follow the steps below to install a second hard drive in the optical drive bay.

Footstep one: Disconnect the ability and remove the bombardment.

Footstep 2: Unscrew the two fasteners (shown in the following picture) to remove the optical bulldoze tray.

Footstep three: Fasten the second difficult drive into a hard bulldoze caddy tray for optical drive slot.

Tip: When you buy this hard drive caddy tray for optical drive slot, please notation the thickness. You should measure the thickness of the optical drive tray in advance.

fasten a hard drive into the hard drive caddy tray for optical drive slot

Step iv: Remove the baffle from the optical drive tray and install information technology on the hard drive caddy tray.

Step 5: Insert the hard drive caddy tray into the optical drive bay and screw the two fasteners unscrewed previously.

How to Install a Second Hard Drive in a Desktop

Step 1: Disconnect the ability to the chassis.

Pace 2: Remove the front cover of the chassis by unscrewing two fasteners shown in the following motion-picture show, and so nudging the cover to the side.

Pace iii: Remove the difficult bulldoze subclass from the chassis and fasten the difficult bulldoze into information technology.

Tip: Hard drives are normally installed at the lower correct corner of the chassis.

Stride 4: Slide the hard drive into the hard drive slot.

Step 5: Plug in the ability and information lines, with one stop into the hard bulldoze and the other terminate into the slot built in the chassis.

Tip: Some chassis demand y'all to remove the back cover to plug in these lines.

Stride 6: Remount the embrace.

Prepare the Hard Drive for Use

Subsequently physically installing a second hard drive, you may wonder how to install information technology in Windows x. For that, y'all should initialize the hard drive, create new partitions, and format the new partitions.

Here is the tutorial on how to install a second hard drive Windows ten.

Footstep 1: Turn on your figurer and open up Disk Management by pressing "Win + R" keys, inbound "diskmgmt.msc" in the Run box, and clicking "OK" push button.

Step ii: For the newly installed hard drive, the arrangement volition automatically pop upwardly the prompt to initialize information technology. The pop-upward window looks like the following i.

Footstep 3: Cull MBR or GPT and then click OK push button.

Tip: You should choose GPT if your difficult drive is more than 2T. Click MBR vs. GPT to know more.

Then, you tin apply this hard drive normally.

As for how to format a new hard drive, you can refer to the following steps.

Pace 1: Right-click the blackness unallocated space and choose New Unproblematic Volume. Follow the magician to create a new partition.

Step 2: Right-click the new partition to choose Format. Then, uncheck Perform a quick format to run a full format, which will automatically check the hard bulldoze to fix some errors.

You can likewise complete the above process through MiniTool Sectionalization Sorcerer. It is a professional division management software.

Here is a step-by-pace guide on how to install a second hard bulldoze in your laptop and desktop PC. If you lot are planning to exercise that, I think you may need this tutorial. Click to tweet

Bottom Line

Do you lot have any bug in installing a second difficult drive? Please leave a comment below. If you have issues with data backup or disk direction, please also leave a comment beneath or e-mail us at [email protected]. Nosotros will reply to y'all as soon equally possible.

How to Install a Second Hard Drive FAQ

How do I get my computer to recognize a 2nd difficult drive?

To make your estimator recognize the 2d difficult bulldoze, you should initialize the hard bulldoze through the following steps:

Open up Disk Management.
Initialize Deejay window will pop up and then choose MBR or GPT to initialize this drive.
Format the drive.

How do I add together a 2nd hard drive in Windows 10?

Remove the computer lesser embrace.
Insert the difficult drive into the slot on the estimator.
Remount the bottom panel of the laptop.
Initialize and format the hard bulldoze in Disk Management.