Thread: NEED TO KNOW HOW TO SET UP HARD DRIVE

I'm going to buy a new hard drive for video work. I have never put in a second HD before and need to know what to do when I've got it out the box. Putting it in the computer seems straight forward enough but how do you configure it? :

what os do you have?

My OS is XP HOME EDITION

This is easy enough. definately one of those tasks that is much harder to explain than to actually just do.

in control panel find the option for 'Computer management'. When that's open click on the 'Disk management' option in the 'tree' on the left. you will see allyour disk drives connected to yoru system.

If you connected up your HDD properly you will see it listed. Just select the new HDD and right click to find a 'format' option. Just remember to format it as NTFS and NOT FAT32 or you will only be doing it again next week.

It might take a little while to do but that's it.

Thanks for that. Just need to make sure Windows doesn't end up on the new drive. Once up and running, how do I put video onto that drive? Do I put the video software on the D drive? When I'm in the C drive do I just click open drive D?

Pretty much. once it's in it's just another disk drive. move files around to/from it using Windows explorer just like you would from a CD/DVD rom drive.

When in your video application just specify d:\xxxx rather than c:\xxxx in your save as dialogue.

Of course you get to name you drive yourself and you might find D already taken by your DVD ro CD drive.

Drive is now up and running and video transferd through Videostudio onto the new second drive. Will I still need to defrag after putting all this footage on it?

With XP defragging doesnt do as much as it used to with say an older system like win98, i suggest defragging if it only really needs it.