To add an extra internal hard drive you must first do some research into your computer. You must check your computer manual or with the manufacturer to find out what kind drive you need before you make the purchase.



Also, you need to know how many hard disk drives already exist on the machine. Most will have only one, and hence it is relatively easy to install another one. If you open up your machine you will find the optical drive for the CD or DVD, maybe a floppy disk drive and the single hard disk drive. If you do not know what the internal hard drive looks like, look at the photos and diagrams in the manual.

The cable system is a very important element when adding an extra internal drive to the computer. There are two common cables that are used to connect drives to the motherboard. One is the IDE drive, which are also known as PATA or Parallel ATA. These cables are flat or thick and are as wide as your finger.

The other is the SATA drives or the Serial ATA drives. These cables are thin and are about the diameter of a pencil. By looking at the cables, you should know which of these cables have to be bought for installing your extra internal hard drive.

It is also possible that your computer has SCSI hard drives, for which you need SCSI cables. The most common types are the PATA or the SATA drives.

If your machine already has two internal hard drives, then it is a little difficult to install a third one. Check out whether there is space for a third drive and if there is no more space left inside the cage, then you could add an external hard drive.

An external hard drive with an enclosure system is probably the easiest way to add an extra hard drive to your computer. The system is fairly simple because you add a standard hard drive outside of the computer CPU and it sits on a desk-friendly case and connects to your computer via USB or FireWire. After you format your new external hard drive, it immediately registers as an extra drive on your computer. Now you can perform normal actions like adding, changing, creating and deleting files.

There are a couple of advantages to adding an external hard drive to your computer, the installation is easy and you do not have to open up the computer case and if you need more space in the future it is very easy to swap for a bigger drive.