i just had an OLD HP machine donated/given to me. upon looking inside the computer, to my amazment there was a spankin' new Western Digital 80 Gig hard drive. im going to put this hard drive in my current machine.

problem is, i have never OWNED, or dealt with a computer that had more then 2 hard drives. i know how to physically install hard drives, but the issue i will most likely enounter will be upon start up.

i assume i will have to go into the BIOS, and make sure the hard drive is read as the slave drive....then what? i assume i will have to format it...but how can i do that without going into the regular operating mode?. please tell me i wont have to reinstall windows or anything, lol.

i have no idea if the hard drive has data on it.Let's assume that hard drive has some version of Windows installed on it; in other words, it was the drive with the Operating System (OS) for the old computer. How do you want to use it in your NEWER computer, just for extra storage or for the OS?

If for extra storage (leaving your OS on your existing drive in the newer computer), then you just configure it as the "slave" drive. The existing drive would be "master". Here's a reference to help: How to Change the Master/Slave Designation on a Hard Drive, and How to Install a Second Hard Drive.

Once you get it installed, you can look and see what's on it. You may want to format it to ERASE everything on it.