How to set a second hard drive in Windows and retrieve data from hard drive?

If your computer has not enough free space and become slower and slower, even though you have delete all the unused files and you completely clear the hard drive, the problem continues. What should you do in that case? To solution is to expand the partition or set a second hard drive. What we talk about is to add an internal hard drive, instead of an external hard drive.Although external hard drive is a storage device with large size, it will not increase your internal hard drive. And they have slower speed than the internal hard drive.

How to add a second internal drive to your computer?

First, you need to know if you can add the second drive to your computer or not.

If you have a laptop, obviously you cannot add a second drive to it. If you have an all-in-one desktop, you also cannot add internal hard drive. To add the internal drive, your desktop should have a mid to full size tower.

Backup your data on the existing internal hard drive. Generally, add a second drive have no effect on your data.

Power down the computer and open the case

Before you open the case, you need to power down the computer. You can unplug the power cable from the socket to case. As human body will create static electricity which may damage the delicate components, you should take measures to get rid if the static electricity in this process.

You can follow the cable of your existing internal hard drive to know where it plugs into the motherboard. The connector on the motherboard is marked as SATA, You can check if there are other SATA connectors available. Most of computer has more than one connectors. If there is, you plug the SATA cable of your new drive to this SATA connector on motherboard. The other end of this cable should be plugged into the driver’s connector. Then you need to connect the power cable.

Close the case and boot your computer. You need to initialize the hard drive.

Open the computer management and click the computer management on the left side. It will pop up a Initialize Disk window which lists your newly installed drive. Check the disk and click OK to start to initialize your installed drive. After that finish, your new installed hard drive can be recognized but still display unallocated and have no drive letter.

Right-click this drive in disk management and choose New simple volume. And then assign a drive letter and format it.

Until now, all the work has been completed, the newly installed hard drive will display in your computer.

How to retrieve data from the internal hard drive?

All the data recovery work observe this principle: no data overwritten. Apparently, the successful data recovery is based on the data has not been overwritten. Stop using this drive and recover immediately is the most important.