A 2nd Hard Disk
Adding a 2nd hard drive to your system gives you a number of options, namely:
· The ability to have more disk space (sounds obvious, but see the next option)
· The ability to "mirror" your existing hard disk (more about this in a moment)
· Partition your system in such a way as to give you multiple platforms to work from (Windows, Windows NT, Linux et al)
· Allow you to "split" your system in numerous ways, such as having an "applications" and "games" drive separate from each other.
One thing that is worth pointing out here is that you should NEVER combine 2 physical drives into 1 logical drive (that is, a "massive" C: drive). If you do this and one of the disks fails, then you are most likely to lose everything - including what is on the "good" drive.
More disk space
Sounds obvious doesn't it? In reality though, there are a number of other options as listed above, but adding a 2nd drive to obtain more disk space is the simplest choice. You install it, partition it, format it and away you go!
A point worth remembering if you do this is if you decide to "move" applications and programs from one drive to the other. You cannot simply "drag and drop" the program folder from one drive to another. The reason is that you won't be updating the system registry if you do this. The registry will still contain details of the old drive, so when the application looks for files, it will be told the wrong location. The best way to move programs is to uninstall them first, then reinstall them on the new drive. That way, the registry gets updated correctly and your applications will work as intended.
If you are adding a 2nd drive, it is worth considering splitting things up to make it easier to find things. For example, You could leave Windows and your applications (word processor, spreadsheet etc), on drive C: and install all your games on the new drive. How you split depends on what you use your machine for.
Disk Mirroring
This is a process where the 2nd drive contains an exact copy of what is on the 1st drive and requires special software in order to make this simple and transparent from the user. The idea is that if you lose something from the 1st drive due to disk errors, you will have a copy on the 2nd, which can be easily copied back.
