i have a spare hard disk, will it do any harm if i put it in to my comp i currently have a 3gb hd and the slave would be a 1.7gb. i don't want to slow my comp down any more than it is but the extra space would be brilliant. any info, i would be greatful thatnk you

On your slave hard drive you can install a small partition (about 150 Mo) where you transfer the swap file and eliminate the constant need for frequent defrag on the primary C drive.Make the changes in your System properties for Virtual memory using drive path and partition size.If you have the cable and one free connector ,go ahead.Good luck.

No problem. Just set the jumpers on the 2nd hard drive to the slave position and away you go.

i have partitioned the drive and formated it, am i ready to go. why will i need to constantly defrag. i only defrag every 4 or 5 months at th moment but i only use my comp 3 times a week at the most! and will it cause slow down? most importantly., but then again it probly can't get much slower lol

The lack of free space on a hard drive can quickly fragment the data. Since you only use the machine occationally, it isn't that much of a factor. If you frequently add/remove software or large files, you would need to defrag much more often.

No, the slave drive won't slow down your system at all. And if you place swap space on the slave drive, as Petit Jean suggests, your system may actually speed up.

Best Luck,
Bob

what is swap space and how do i install it? thank you all for the advice so far.

The swap file is used by Windows.It is the place where the transient data handled by the CPU to keep the programs going is stored only temporary.A large amount of this data is going first to the RAM memory faster than the hard drive and then to the hard drive if need be.Your computer being a Pentium 166 MHz the advice to keep a constant amount of 150 Mo swap file on the 2nd hard drive (always on the second,don't do this with one drive only:in this case let Windows manage the swap file)is conservative.Newer and faster computers would need a little experimenting to find the correct size.You need to partititon with fdisk and the partiton may be logical.You go to the system folder and choose Performance for the virtual memory to be adjusted.You enter the partition name and drive size. For instance: E:\150 Mo. Reboot and you will find a swap file in this partition.Good luck.

cool i'll try that. but i'm bound to screw it up.
what i will do:
use fdisk to patition slave with a logical partition.
name partition as e:/150
reboot and there should be a swap file on the slave

ok am i missing any thing?
do i not need to reformat after partitioning?

i am learning, one day i will be able to help others you know. lol
cheers.

When you are setting up your slave HD, you are not going to "name" it anything. It will be assigned a drive letter, probably E if you have a CDROM using D:. Don't worry about the swap file yet, that is done after everything is all set and the slave HD is installed as explained above.

You're making this more complicated than it needs to be.

Put the HD in the computer, making sure it's jumpered and connected correctly. Make sure the drive type is set to AUTO in cmos setup. That should be an option with your computer.

It's always best to partition and format a HD in the computer it's to be used in. So start windows, run fdisk and remove whatever partitions are on the new slave drive. Then repartition it as a single partition. Then format the new drive. Windows will probably need to be restarted between each partition and formatting operation.

If you fdisk or partition from the floppy disk make sure which drive you're configuring. It's not at all uncommon for people to end up losing everything by partitioning or formatting the wrong drive.

Another thing, adding the slave will probably kick your cdrom drive letter up to E: as the slave will become d: If you have software that goes to D: as the cdrom you'll need to redirect it to E: