I have only one hard drive on my Dell Demension E510. I would like to
purchase a new drive (SATA), make that my primary disk, and take my present
primary and make it a secondary. Can I just pop it in and I will be able to
read the disk or do I have to wipe everthing off it and reformate. Thanks for
the help.

Hard drive manufacturer's provide diagnostics and other software to help you
add or change out drives. If your new drive does not come with a CD with
this software then download it from the drive manufacturer's web site.

"Mike Busch" <wizof103@verizon.net> wrote in message
news:A9A50023-E10C-44F2-90BB-79AA5A248566@microsoft.com...
>I have only one hard drive on my Dell Demension E510. I would like to
> purchase a new drive (SATA), make that my primary disk, and take my
> present
> primary and make it a secondary. Can I just pop it in and I will be able
> to
> read the disk or do I have to wipe everthing off it and reformate. Thanks
> for
> the help.

"Mike Busch" <wizof103@verizon.net> wrote
>I have only one hard drive on my Dell Demension E510. I would like to
> purchase a new drive (SATA), make that my primary disk, and take my
> present
> primary and make it a secondary. Can I just pop it in and I will be able
> to
> read the disk or do I have to wipe everthing off it and reformate. Thanks
> for
> the help.

You're post is unclear. What do you mean by "make that my primary disk and
take my present and make it a secondary". Primary and secondary only refer
to drives on the ATA IDE interface. It does not apply to SATA. Also, as a
general rule, the drive from which the OS boots can be any drive, as can the
drive where the OS files reside.

So what exactly are you trying to do and what it the hardware setup? Do you
have connections on the motherboard for both SATA and IDE? Do you want to
make the SATA drive the boot drive, and have the windows OS files on that
drive, using the original drive as storage?

If you provide more specifics someone will reply with a more focused reply.

--
Rock [MS-MVP User/Shell]

On Jul 1, 8:33 pm, "Rock" <R...@nospam.net> wrote:
> "Mike Busch" <wizof...@verizon.net> wrote
>
> >I have only one hard drive onmyDell Demension E510. I would like to
> > purchase a new drive (SATA), make thatmyprimarydisk, and takemy
> > present
> > primary and make it asecondary. Can I just pop it in and I will be able
> > to
> > read thediskor do I have to wipe everthing off it and reformate. Thanks
> > for
> > thehelp.
>
> You're post is unclear. What do you mean by "make thatmyprimarydiskand
> takemypresent and make it asecondary". Primary andsecondaryonly refer
> to drives on the ATA IDE interface. It does not apply to SATA. Also, as a
> general rule, the drive from which the OS boots can be any drive, as can the
> drive where the OS files reside.
>
> So what exactly are you trying to do and what it the hardware setup? Do you
> have connections on the motherboard for both SATA and IDE? Do you want to
> make the SATA drive thebootdrive, and have the windows OS files on that
> drive, using the original drive as storage?
>
> If you provide more specifics someone will reply with a more focused reply.
>
> --
> Rock [MS-MVP User/Shell]

OK I have an SATA drive that is my boot drive. It is my only drive. I
would like to purchase a new SATA Drive and format and install the
Opeating system and make the new one my Boot ot Primary drive. The
original boot drive I would like to use it as my secondary drive but
keep all the data on it. If it connects I would then delete the
operating system off the original so the PC will not be confused. I
need to know if this is do-able.

wizof103 <wizof103@verizon.net> wrote:

>OK I have an SATA drive that is my boot drive. It is my only drive. I
>would like to purchase a new SATA Drive and format and install the
>Opeating system and make the new one my Boot ot Primary drive. The
>original boot drive I would like to use it as my secondary drive but
>keep all the data on it. If it connects I would then delete the
>operating system off the original so the PC will not be confused. I
>need to know if this is do-able.

The PC won't be "confused". I have two bootable hard drives (of three
total) in my system. The second is a clone of the first and that
clone gets updated weekly, while the data on it gets updated every few
hours on a daily basis.

"wizof103" <wizof103@verizon.net> wrote
> On Jul 1, 8:33 pm, "Rock" <R...@nospam.net> wrote:
>> "Mike Busch" <wizof...@verizon.net> wrote
>>
>> >I have only one hard drive onmyDell Demension E510. I would like to
>> > purchase a new drive (SATA), make thatmyprimarydisk, and takemy
>> > present
>> > primary and make it asecondary. Can I just pop it in and I will be able
>> > to
>> > read thediskor do I have to wipe everthing off it and reformate. Thanks
>> > for
>> > thehelp.
>>
>> You're post is unclear. What do you mean by "make thatmyprimarydiskand
>> takemypresent and make it asecondary". Primary andsecondaryonly refer
>> to drives on the ATA IDE interface. It does not apply to SATA. Also, as
>> a
>> general rule, the drive from which the OS boots can be any drive, as can
>> the
>> drive where the OS files reside.
>>
>> So what exactly are you trying to do and what it the hardware setup? Do
>> you
>> have connections on the motherboard for both SATA and IDE? Do you want
>> to
>> make the SATA drive thebootdrive, and have the windows OS files on that
>> drive, using the original drive as storage?
>>
>> If you provide more specifics someone will reply with a more focused
>> reply.
>>
>> --
>> Rock [MS-MVP User/Shell]
>
> OK I have an SATA drive that is my boot drive. It is my only drive. I
> would like to purchase a new SATA Drive and format and install the
> Opeating system and make the new one my Boot ot Primary drive. The
> original boot drive I would like to use it as my secondary drive but
> keep all the data on it. If it connects I would then delete the
> operating system off the original so the PC will not be confused. I
> need to know if this is do-able.


Yes it is certainly do-able. Use the copy utility provided by the drive
manufacturer or use one of the disk cloning utilities such as Acronis True
Image or Casper. Clone the old drive to the new, remove the old drive, set
up the new one as drive to boot from, and do the first boot with the new
drive. After that you can install the old drive and delete what you want.

--
Rock [MS-MVP User/Shell]