I want to install a slave drive on my computer, but not being familiar with all the types of hard drives, I'm concerned about getting one that's not compatable. I have a 2.1 GB IDE that I'd like to leave as the master for simplicity sake, but I want to add atleast 20 GB, but I'm unsure what to get. I'd appreciate any info you can give me! Thanks!

Just make sure it's an IDE drive (the most common). You don't want a SCSii or the new SATA drive.

As long as you at least have windows 98, you are ok with a 20 gig hard drive. Just look for an IDE harddrive (the big grey ribbons type). most harddrives you'd see at a store are IDE Aside from size, there is also speed.. 5400 or 7200RPMs. 5400's are a little cheaper if you're on a budget and dont need the extra performance. Once you get it, you'll have to switch the jumpers to slave. instructions that come with the hard drive will show you how

IMPORTANT!!!!! You have to check the info about your mainboard first because those old boards often don't support large drives. Some of those barriers of old boards are 6,4, 8,4 and 32GB and then 127GB. It depends on the board itself and the bios version so a bios update may help but as I don't know what board and bios version you have I can't say anything about it. But there are also programs provided by the harddrive manufacturers (freeware) which allows to install bigger drives but it's better if you can update the bios to support the drive!

Yeah, Free Weasel is right, you have to check the M/B manual to see if it will support a 20GB HDD. About a year ago i had a Cyrix MII PR200MX Computer and the original Hard Drive wen't so i went and bought a 20GB thinking it would work, but it would only detect it as an 8.4GB due to the age of the M/B and BIOS. No matter what you can get a 20GB HDD to show up as a 20GB HDD, its simple, go to the manufactures website and download "Ontrack" or something similar and that makes the BIOS read it as the correct size. I would say you will need to download a program because those Computers are really old. Daniel

In addition to what was stated by others. If you have a size limitation, you can get around that by partitioning the HD into allowable partitions. There are advantages to doing that anyway.

OtheHill, sorry but that's not correct. You can partition the drive if you have a size problem with the OS but if the bios doesn't detect the right size there's no way to partition it because FDisk not even shows the remaining size so you also can't partition it! I've been through that some years ago but then I haven't access to programs like partition magic so I can't say how they work but I'd say it's the same problem. If there is no working bios the only solution are Ontrack, EZ-Drive or whatever the name of the provided software is. But in every case take the software provided by the manufacturer because it should be tested with their drives!