Can i test an old hardisk on my Functioning

[sparrow]

Hi good day, i hope you can give me some opinion, while helping my aunt clean-up their old house I found an old hardisk; its a MAXTOR N256 I cant seem to find details of its Storage capacity (or i don't know how to look). Anyway My aunt gave it to me since it seems that she don't know were it came from (probably from one of her children). Anyway I want to test it by Installing it on my PC, what i want to know is by doing this what will it do to my PC? is it ok to remove the Functioning hardisk on my PC and put the Old hardisk that i found?  what will happen to my functioning HD? will all the file be erased? do i have to reformat my functioning HD when I return it to my PC after testing the Old Hardisk that i found? Or will my PC simply be back on it original settings when I return the original hardisk installed? Hope you can advice me on this.

[Track]

You cant remove ur current HDD, because it has Windows XP on it, and everything u have on ur PC is on it.
I mean u could remove it, but then ud have to install Windows on the "new" one.

What u must do, is check what kind of connectors the HDD has, and wich ur motherboard has. Its probably IDE and so is ur current HDD. If u have only 1 HDD right now in ur PC then u could connect the "new" one as a slave to ur current one and that would work fine, or u could just connect it to any IDE connector if u have any extra, but thats really a waste of space.

Your best option would be to leave the current HDD inside and just ADD the "new" one.. i mean its bolted in there. Do u even know how to install an HDD?

Also, the HDD that u found, has less then 10GB, probably 5 or 2GB. So its really not worth it.

[GX1_Man]

That is a 15 gig ATA-66 w meg cache 7200 RPM drive. You can jumper it as a slave (see attachment) and use it in your machine after formatting it. Assuming it is functional, you have room for it and connectors you get an extra 15 gig drive space.

http://www.maxtor.com/_files/maxtor/en_us/documentation/quick_specs/diamondmax_plus_40_ultra_ata_66_quick_specs.pdf

[sparrow]

Gee Guys, thanks for the advices that you have shared, Actually I'm not intersted in using the old HDD to put additional storage space to my current system, I'm however planning to use this old HDD (assuming its still functioning)  in simulating a  newly assembled  PC system, I want to use it to practice and learn  installing an OS and formatting an HDD. My current system already has 2 HDD's (master and slave). What will happen if i remove this 2 HDD's in my system?  will this mess up my current PC's hardware and software setups?

[GX1_Man]

Just remove your hard drives and install the new one where the old master went, and jumper it accordingly to the picture I gave you. Make sure the hard drive info is correct in the BIOS.

You can replug your original drives when you are through playing. Be sure not to bend any pins while installing/uninstalling.