Compaq Deskpro EN PII 450 - Adding 2nd hard drive...

[BR731649]

Compaq Deskpro EN PII 450 MHz (upgraded to Intel Celeron 1.4 GHz with Powerleap adapter)
TNT Riva32 MB graphics
Intel BX 440 AGP chipset.
768 MB SD RAM,
6.4 Gb Hard Disk.
BIOS: 686 T3 99/08/22
Windows Me

Hi,
I was thinking of putting in a second (additional) hard drive to this system (the 6.4 Gb hard disk is getting to be too small).
Is it possible to run two hard drives on this computer?
In particular, will the power supply be able to cope with the power demands of 2 hard drives? Or is it too small?
I have taken a peek at the PSU. It's not clear how many watts it is, but has "Do not exceed 200W" on it, if that is any help.
I have not put in a hard drive before, so any advice/help appreciated.

[Perignon]

Hello,

You are right wondering whether or not the PSU unit has enough power. Guess you could ask Compaq support to check that first, together with the maximum HD size/speed they would recommend.

Supposing the precautionary mesures aforementionned conclude to a go, I see no other problem but finding a slot that could host your additional IDE disk.

Alain

[(anon)]

Clone the data from your old HD to a larger and faster HD. Your system will perform better with the faster drive. You can extract all the performance from a new drive if you use a PCI ATA controller card.

F.

[james christopher]

Actually , I have done this several times on both the PII and PIII units for the same reasons. Never had a noticeable problem with the P/S in these PC's but you can find exact specs on the HP site if you have enough patience to keep looking. I am finishing a PIII 650 unit and just added a second Fujitsu 6.4 gig slaved to the existing 4.3 gig. Got a "1720 imminent drive failure", but I think Compaq has a softpaq for that, so that's next for me.

Good luck

[BR731649]

Thanks P'Gnon
Francis Nguyen adn James Christopher for your replies.
Well, if no one gives any advice to the contrary, I will go ahead and buy a 40 GB Western Digital and put it as slave to the existing 6.4 GB drive.

[CA972313]

You should either clone your 6.4GB drive onto the new one, or re-install your OS on the new drive.

In any case, your new drive should be the boot "master" drive, and your old drive should become your "slave" drive.

Windows will boot much faster, and you should see better overall performance because your new drive will be faster.