Anilrgowda

This thread addresses Win XP Home Edition

I strongly suggest you do not use Win XP disk management to set up a new slave drive.

If you use disk management to partition your new slave drive the slave drive will become co-Dependant on the boot drive. The reason for the co-dependency; is disk management being operated from within the active OS elects to write the new slave drive's set-up geometry (partition parameters) to the active windows boot drive.

In the event (and sooner or later it HAS to happen) you lose your boot drive to mechanical failure or just plain time for a reformat. After the reformat and reloading of the OS you will find yourself in a situation where you can not access the slave drive you were depending on

The data will be there and intact; but the drive will be seen as unusable in disk management; most likely described as unallocated; and you will be prompted to reformat the drive !!

You can correct this problem by purchasing a partition recovery utility to re-establish the partition set-up parameters. The cost= about $40.00
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download4129.html

OR you can beat the disaster to the punch: by using the hard drive manufacturers set-up tools (free for download at each respective manufacturer's website) to partition and format your new or used slave drive. These tools work in DOS (but easy to use) but the benefit to working in DOS; is they are able to write the drive's partition set-up parameter's to the actual slave drive instead of writing this critical info to your windows boot drive !!

another set of handy tools for partitioning is the famed Partition Magic (i believe they have a freeware version which has limited tools but will perform the functions needed as this discussion pertains.)

or you can use Boot It NG (free for 30 days)
http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/bootitng.html

I don't suggest the use of the last two tools for beginners or modest experienced users >>>> they can be tricky and devastating; I strongly suggest they be used by intermediate experienced computer individuals. The hard drive manufacturer's tools are far more suited to new users.

Now for the closing comment:

You can without any ramifications use Windows Disk Management for formatting without negative impact ...... but NOT the partition tools from within disk management. The partition tools in disk management work very nicely and they are very easy to use ! but their is a price to be paid for easy ??