How to install a secondary SATA hard drive. If both your hard drives are SATA then what you will do is use the SATA cable numbered “1″ for your primary hard drive. Use SATA cable numbered “2″ for your secondary drive (old). SATA cables are marked with numbers.

Try to boot your computer up with your drives set this way and it should work. If the computer does not boot or boots off the wrong drive go into the BIOS and make sure the boot order is correct. Your new 1.5 TB SATA drive should be listed first with your older driver listed second.

Check out the adding a hard drive hp page that shows you how to add an additional hard drive to your HP system, so that you have both hard drives configured correctly.

If all goes will this will allow you to boot off your new 1.5 TB drive and be able to access the data off your old secondary drive. If you want to be able to switch back and forth and boot off each hard drive then that will require more diligence and is beyond the scope of this article. These instructions were written for an HP Media Center M7250N desktop PC with a new secondary 1.5 terabyte hard drive, but can certainly be used as basis points for adding a secondary SATA hard drive into other PC’s.