Two hard disks in a laptop

[bigmutt]

On my laptops I always move "My Documents" from its default location to D:\My Documents. Use Windows own steps to do this, to insure all your data is moved to the nw location and Windows "points" to it for future use. You may do this for documents, music, pictures, videos or whatever. It is generally best to leave the program installs in their default locations on the primary bootup drive - makes it easier if your uninstall information becomes corrupted later.
DrTom
Webb City, Missouri

Thanks, I'll do it !!!!

My only question is with how you accomplish the above steps regarding moving My Documents: is it possible you list the complete steps to do this? I'm not confident enough without a complete roadmap.

Thanks so much for your earlier comprehensive reply.

Rick

 

[drtlawson]

Use the "Start" button.
Can you see "My Documents" or "Documents" as one of the choices? If not, right click on properties, go to "Start Menu." Click on "customize" - and scroll down until you see the "My Documents" option. Click to check it. Then close and redo the Start Menu.

In XP and Vista: Right click on "Documents" on the start menu. The window should include "Location" and show it (probably under your username on the C drive). Click the location. Browse to the new (D?) drive. If you have not done it, make a new directory on D called whatever ("My Documents" simplifies it by giving it the same name Windows will use for it.) Click on it.

Windows will now ask you if you want to move all your files to the new location. Say yes. This moves both files and other pointers (some may be related to your music or picture files).

In Windows 7 there's one extra step:
In place of right clicking on Documents from the Start Menu, left (regular) click on your name (should be at the top on the right side of the start menu). This will open up your username file area.

Now, find "My Documents" folder and right click on it.

As in Vista, there should be a tab that says "Location" (if you use a replacement from Windows Explorer file manager, you may need to turn that off - Directory Opus will not show the "Location" tab, but Windows own file manager does).

Again, browse to the new location, click and set it. As before, it should move all your files.

NOTE: In Windows 7 you can actually have several "Documents" locations at once. This is the new feature called "Libraries." You can read up on it, but it lets you have more one than major location for your documents, pictures, music, or whatever. It does not replace sub-folders, but gives you some additional flexibility.

DrTom

 

[bigmutt]

you are great, Dr. T !!
so comprehensive & detailed; the things about Win 7 were new to me, but that's the OS I am using. so double-thanks.

Rick

 

[jnaber15]

I recently added a second 320gb HD to my HP Pavilion dv7. I was running vista, and wanted to upgrade to win 7. I got the second drive working, and put win 7 on it. Everything has worked great, and I was able to transfer all of my data to the new HD.

Now, everything seems great with win 7, so I am ready to reformat the original drive to use for storage, but disk management won't let me format an "active system partition" and I don't see any options to take it offline, or make inactive, or anything of the sort. When I boot, I get a boot menu that offers either vista or 7, both of which are working fine. Might I have to change the physical position of the drives, to make my win 7 drive be drive 0, before I try to erase the vista drive?

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[John_Doe132]

I assume you have Vista on drive 0 and Win7 on drive 1 right? if so the reason you cannot format drive 0 i believe is that when the PC boots the BIOS/bootloader looks in the first drive for the MBR and boot.ini file so therefore it doesn't want the first drive reformated. If you do change physical position of drives, as a possible fix make sure you copy and modify the boot.ini file

 

[John_Doe132]

I have a HP Pavillion DV7 i will have 2X500GB drives should i run RAID0 or have one drive OS and Installs and other drive files? The advantage of going with the later is i do not need to reformat, but i do have an external drive to transfer files to.

Also i have a eSATA/USB port on the DV7 but my external hard drive is USB would i gain any speed by plugging the drive into the eSATA vs another USB2 port? and the connector on my hard drive is mini usb can i get a mini usb to eSATA connector?

 

[John_Doe132]

just figured out another option which would be better:
32GB SSD as Drive 0 with Win7 installed
500GB HDD for everything else
or
2X500GB HDD RAID 0

 

[Guest]

Most upscale Sony models have a slot for a second drive

 

[John_WA]

I came across this thread while searching for laptops with multiple hard drives. I learned yesterday that Sager makes a series of 'desktop replacement' (first time I've heard that term) laptops geared to gamers that can have up to 3 hard drives and still have an optical drive. The hard drives can be configured in several ways. I just saw one yesterday and it looked very impressive. Otherwise I never knew that the Sager brand existed until yesterday.

 

[donovands]

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=5270805&CatId=4938

This. 2x HDD bays, only one filled with a 500GB 5400rpm HDD. This monster has a GTX 260 in it to boot. It's got an eSATA port as well, if you also wanted external storage. All for an amazing $1,150.

 

[Billgm42]

My old IBM Thinkpad T42 2378 allows 2 HDDs. The second drive is installed in the Ultrabay which can also be swapped out for a DVD drive. I don't think any of the current Lenovo models have the same capability.

 

[rattman169]

Here are the biggest, fastest gaming laptops that can hold up to 3 HDD internally and in raid (PS, use actual CPU's, no mobile CPu's and full video in SLI)

http://www.sagernotebook.com/

 

[ashleyR]

Dell Studio 17 can also take 2 hdd's internally ( not using a bay ) but require a fitting kit .

 

[yyztd]

I own a Toshiba A135 S4477 that had to hard drives built in, one on the left side one on the right.
I currently am running Windows 7 pre with 2 gigs of ram, it can take 4gigs
and a 500GB in one bay and a 100GB in the other both SATA.
this machine still runs great for 3 or 4 years old and still have room to add more ram if i need it.
I was looking today at getting 2 1TB drives since I've been archiving home movies.
I never want to go back to a single drive again.

 

[Guest]

This is a very late response but yes you can have 2, even 3 HDs in a laptop. I've used Sager notebook computers for years and right now have a NP9261 model with three hard drives. I suggest you look at Xotic notebooks at http://www.xoticpc.com/ then select Manufacturer, then Sager/Cleve. Scroll down for the models that have multi-HDs, usually these are the 17 & 18 inch screen models. be sure to select a model that specifically is built on a Clevo chassis.

 

[tomshd4jim]

I've never seen a laptop with 2 HD's. They are compact and don't usually allow room for extras like that.

An external enclosure with this HD, or the 150G version of it, should give plenty of speed. You should be able to get about 480Mbps.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136322

My HP Pavillion laptop has a blank bay (up until now) and I added a 32o HHD to the 160 HHD very easily. You never saw one?? How long have you had a laptop?

 

[ashertech]

The HP DV7-1232NR can handle two internal hard drives without sacrificing the DVD drive. It only comes with 1 drive caddy though. You can easily pick up a 2nd drive caddy on eBay relatively cheaply. I have one of these computers and have tried my hard drive in either of the SATA slots. I also upgraded the notebook to 8 GB RAM and a 500 GB hard drive and put Windows 7 Professional on it. Unfortunately, after all the upgrades, I have way too much money tied up in it to be able to sell it affordably. I have it available for $1250. But to answer the initial question, it is possible to have 2 internal hard drives in a notebook. You just have to know which ones are able to handle it. Incidentally, I bought a 1 TB hard drive to put in it and discovered it was to high (12.5 mm high) as opposed to the conventional 9.5 mm high. I then settled for the 500 GB though I understand you can get 750 GB Hitachi hard drives that would fit.

In a desktop PC we can have two hard disks. Is it possible to have two hard disks in a laptop?

Very often if a fault arises and there is a hard disk failure it results in loss of everything. If important data or backup clones are stored in the second hard drive we can use that. An additional partition in the hard disk drive does not help in the case of hard disk failure. USB drives (pen drives or external hard disk drives) are awfully slow.

I hane an old Dell laptop Latitude D810 with a 100 GB hard disk and a brother of mine has an old Dell Latitude C640 with a 40 GB hard disk. Both of us are interested in adding an additional hard disk drive if possible. Even if we go in for new laptops (any brand) we should like to ensure the availabllity of two hard drives.

Is that possible? GUIDANCE PLEASE

 

[Mousemonkey]

This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey