Power Supply For Adding Second HD

[jakethegriff]

This may be a dumb question, but I've not yet found the answer. Nor opened my case to look yet.

I have a Gateway Dx4200-09
https://www.cnet.com/products/gateway-dx4200-09/specs/

I'm adding a secondary 4tbWD bare drive, and 4gb(2gb ea) of RAM. I purchased the drive and RAM, and an additional Sata cable per suggestions online from what I've read. My question is regarding the power as this will be a secondary drive to store media on. I currently have a 640gb HD with my OS and everything. I also know I have 2 open bays for extra drives, but I'm not sure if I need to also purchase a Power Supply Cable for the new bare drive as well or anything else i may have overlooked?


Secondly - what setting keywords should i be searching for to install this 4tb drive as a secondary? Would this be considered a Slave then as it will be Drive E: or F: ? Or is it as simple as installing it loading the boot menu to point to the existing HD when startup occurs?


I apologize in advance for the naivety as this is my first real undertaking of a PC project. Thanks,

Jake

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

Hopefully your PSU has another SATA power for the new drive.

 

[jakethegriff]

And in the event that it does not, what would I need to be looking for, to purchase in order to accomodate the extra drives, that it says it has room for?

"There's room for two extra memory chips, a PCI slot (in addition to another occupied by the 56k modem), a smaller 1x PCI Express slot, and a 16x PCI Express slot for a graphics card. You can also drop two more hard drives into the exposed bay, in addition to adding another forward-facing optical drive." - which makes me hopeful said power cable(s) are included, but then again I have no idea what to expect, or if it's common practice for manufacturers to include additional power supplies or not.

 

[fluked]

Might need a molex to sata power adapter, I'd plan on it if that is the original drive. If it is the original drive, it might have a sata hdd, but could be using a molex connection to power it (older sata drives had both molex and sata).

 

[jakethegriff]

Thanks for the replies. Now at least I know what I'm looking for. I would open the case, but I'm using it currently compressing some mkv'S. I just wanted to get a parts list of what may be needed.

 

[clarkjd]

At least, according to the specs on the link the OP provided, it DOES have a power supply.

 

[jakethegriff]

Yeah, I've scoured many a thread hoping to ID it, but I've had no luck yet. Hence my thread here.

 

[Paperdoc]

Do NOT worry about Molex power connector or adapters. That machine came with a SATA 3.0 Gb/s HDD (640 GB) standard, so there is no doubt it has SATA power output connectors coming from the PSU. On most such machines the wires from the PSU would have one or more spare un-used power connectors to make adding a drive easier.

Do NOT look for Master and Slave and those things. Those terms were used ONLY with older IDE drives. ALL SATA drives are used with only ONE drive connected by a data cable to each mobo SATA data header, and there are NO jumpers to be adjusted on SATA drives. The terms to use are: you have a Boot Drive (your old unit that has your OS on it), and you are adding a Data-only Drive.

When you install a new empty HDD in a machine, there is a procedure you must follow to prepare it for use. Windows has the utility you need for that built in. It is called Disk Management. You get into that and it shows you all the drives in your system in a couple of ways. You need to look particularly at the lower right part of Disk Management because that is where ALL drives will be shown, including this new one that Windows does not yet know how to use. The display SCROLLS, so if you don't see your new drive, look further down. Then RIGHT-click on it and tell it to Create a New Simple Volume. BUT before you do any of this, READ this next part.

You have not mentioned an important factor. You plan to install a 4 TB HDD. I am assuming you will use it only for data storage etc., and NOT try to BOOT the system from it. You will continue to use your old drive as the boot drive in the machine. If that is true, you do NOT need a feature called "UEFI Support" in your machine's BIOS for this.

HOWEVER, the only way to use a drive over 2 TB is if it is Partitioned using the new GPT system, rather than the older MBR system. If you use MBR, no matter what physical size that drive is, you will only have access to the first 2 TB. Now comes the snag: all 32-bit versions of Windows do NOT have a device driver for drives partitioned the GPT way so cannot use them. You MUST be using a 64-bit version of Windows, which DOES have the required driver. Then, when you use Disk Management to prepare the HDD, make sure you tell it to use the GPT system.

If your existing Windows on the old drive is a 32-bit version, I am not sure there is any simple way to convert or "upgrade" to a 64-bit version. You might have to do a complete fresh install of a 64-bit version.

If you are using 32-bit Windows, you might try looking for another alternative. Consult Tech Support from the maker of this new 4 TB unit you are buying, Ask them if the can supply a device driver or some special software utility that allows you to use the full 4 TB of space in a 32-bit version of Windows. Some HDD makers can supply this, even though Windows 32-bit versions do not have them. But be aware that this may mean that it would be hard to move that drive to another machine and use it, since its data may be organized in a non-standard way.

 

[jakethegriff]

That's really good information, I appreciate the time you took to craft the reply. I'm almost 99% sure the OS is 64bit, but I will make sure when I get back home. I do know that when I purchased it New in 2009 it had 64bit Vista, but i had shortly after run Ubuntu on it for a while, before reinstalling windows 7 from a boot disk I had. I didn't think to check the bit. I will make sure to do so.

 

[jakethegriff]

In reading further, I have found some threads via google regarding GPT formatting on 32 bit machines, so I will keep that in the back of my mind, after I install the drive, hopefully within the next few days. Thanks again.

 

[clarkjd]

One thing I just noticed: you have 4gb of ram installed, and plan to get 4 gb more. be advised that in order to use the full 8 gb of ram you will need a 64-bit OS. If you are still using Vista and it is 32-bit, then you will have to do a clean install of a 64bit OS. That means that you will have to re-install ALL of you programs and apps, also. This will be true no matter if you stay with Vista, go to Win10, or get something like Linux. No 32bit OS will support more than4 gb of ram.

 

[jakethegriff]

I don't currently have vista. I'm running W7, as mentioned before I'm almost positive It's 64bit, as it initially came with 64bit Vista.

Luckily - me looking at everything from a "worst case scenario" situation surrounding this, a full re-install of windows and programs, isn't a large task in my opinion. as this PC truly serves as a HTPC that I also happen to browse and use for Qbittorrent, through a VPN service. I have all important files backed up on 2 seperate externals. So truly the re installation of programs would be the only time sucker. I appreciate the reminder though - could save me some headscratching when it comes time to fire it up.

 

[Paperdoc]

Thanks for Best Solution. Let us know how it progresses from here.

 

[jakethegriff]

Thanks guys. Very helpful thread, and I appreciate you not coming out and just saying "save your money until you can buy a new PC" etc.. which is the majority of what I had read on multiple forums. I had done alot of research, and I'm sure these questions could have been answered - the problem is that I'm such a novice with Computer hardware, i never knew the appropriate things to ask, to answer my queries.

Secondly - i did verify this evening, I do have a 64bit version of 7 running on this PC. HDD should be here tomorrow, so I'll hopefully be completed by the end of the weekend.

 

[Paperdoc]

Great! With 64-bit Win 7 booting from your old HDD as always, adding the 4 TB HDD should be no problem. I expect that the required driver for a GPT-partitioned HDD is already in there, so you'll just need to Create a New Simple Volume with a GPT Partition system and use the entire space as one large "drive".

 

[jakethegriff]

All is well. I purchased a "take out" certified WD 4TB from a verified user on ebay, and the drive came in all WD packaging, and anti-static wrap. Opened the case, and was happy to see the 2 extra power cords for additional drives.

I plugged it in, along with the SATA cable, fired it up. Windows automatically installed the drivers and much to my surprised it had already been formatted. 3.63TB of free space. THanks for the help here -

My last questions - rather than a new thread... I'm sort of a minimalist when it comes to folders and such - the drive came loaded with the following folders... Can they be deleted, with out issue?

Screen Shot;

 

[clarkjd]

I suspect that they are WD tools and utilities. You might look in the user manual and see if you even want them. You could offload them to a USB thumb drive, and delete them from the HDD.