How to install used HDD

[mcooke]

Maybe a stupid question but here goes. How do I install a used HDD and get the bios to autodetect it. I've been told that once a drive is formatted the bios is no longer able to autodetect and therefore you must know the drive's specs so you can manually enter the information. But how would one know what the specs are? Or is there a way to get the bios to detect a used HDD?

[ragtop]

Most of the time there is no problem auto detecting a used hard drive - just go into BIOS and set it for auto detect.

If you run into a problem with the auto detect, you can set the parameters manually. You can usually find the parameters listed on the hard drive's label. If not, go to the drive manufacturer's website, and look it up by model number.