Best options for second HD on gaming computer

**abdul.jones** · June 20th, 2012, 12:28 PM

Favoured son wants another hard drive put on his computer, as he's running out of room for all his games. I have suggested he just uninstall the ones he's not playing, but he's thirteen now and hence a teenager, ergo he knows better than me. I don't play games and neither have I ever set up two hard drives on one computer, so would appreciate advice and instruction on how to do it. Need it be an internal hard drive or would the games play in Windows Xp if they were stored on an external drive? Also, out of curiousity, is there any limit to the amount of gigabytes a system will recognise on the hard drive? His motherboard's 3-4 years old and he's talking about a tetrabyte.

**GroundZero3** · June 20th, 2012, 12:31 PM

if the games are installed on an external drive they would work but there could be a preformance hit depending on the interface (USB2/3 or firewire or whatever option you pick)

Your motherboard shouldnt have any issues with seeing and formating the drive. What motherboard does your son have?

How to Install a New Hard Drive | PCWorld

**Whir** · June 20th, 2012, 12:36 PM

While I feel his pain of ever decreasing room for games, it's certainly not impossible to simply uninstall some to make room for new ones. I only have about 50GB of space for games so I am constantly uninstalling old to make room for new.

When games are uninstalled the right way, they usually ask or just leave their saves and settings on your hard drive so if you reinstall later, you have lost no progress or keybinds and the like. This information generally takes up very little space and shouldn't be considered an issue.

But, hard drives are quite cheap at the moment, so purchasing an additional one may not be a poor idea to extend the lifespan of the computer. See GroundZero's post above for relevant information.

**abdul.jones** · July 3rd, 2012, 05:12 PM

thanks for the replies. Sorry to be so long in responding- a combination of work/homelife pressures and not being able to get Favoured Son off the computer long enough to get the spec. Motherboard is a winfast NF45K8AA- 8EKRS. I believe it's made by Foxcomm. So do I just get another drive to work with the one he's got, or would it be simpler to get a bigger drive and copying everything onto that? he's only got games on the thing, so there's no real need for a back up that I can see. Then I can just chuck the old drive in a caddy until it dies.
not being a gamer, i'm not sure what his best option is. Advice would be appreciated. At present costs, i could get him a tetrabyte if it will work with the motherboard

**GroundZero3** · July 3rd, 2012, 05:28 PM

You cant just copy said data from one drive to another, you will need to clone it or just slave the second drive. Slaving it is the easiest option, you just put the hard drive on an open port plug in power turn on pc and windows should find it. You will probably have to partition it and format the drive. Install all future games onto the secondary drive

**stroyal** · July 4th, 2012, 09:45 AM

I'm not a gamer either, but I Flight Sim.
Flight Simulator benefits from having a separate drive for the program.
AFAIK, any game that has to access the drive all the time will benefit also.

You should have 2 GIG of ram also, for gaming with XP.

A second drive can also be used for fraps, but you will have to look that up, as I just know it exists.

Edit
I guess fraps would more of a third drive thing