So ive come to the conclusion that Id like to get a second hard drive. My old 500 gig one is beginning to slow down and I need more storage space.

What I was thinking of doing was getting a new SATA 2 TB HDD and installing my OS (Vista 64bit) on the new one and using the old HDD as storage.

So far as I can figure out, I should remove the old HDD and install the new one by itself. Install Vista on the new hard drive after formating it, then re-install the old HDD and format the old one to remove the OS from it. After all that I should have the "new" hard drive to run applications and the OS and the "old" drive for storage of media.

Does this sound like the way to do it? I was thinking that the OS might "freak out" since for a time Id have the same OS installed on two HDD's. I was also wondering if it would be better to Format the new HDD before removing the old one.

I know the SSD hard drives are recommended for running your OS these days but since Windows Vista isnt optimised for SSD like windows 7 is and the price of about a dollar a gig I'd prefer to go with SATA drives untill I replace the whole PC in a year or two.

Anyway any adive or guidance is very much appreciated.

Get something like a 120-240GB SSD for your OS drive then get some 2TB WB green drive for "storage".

Don't even worry if Vista isn't really optimized for SSD's, you're missing out on crazy speeds irregardless if the OS.

But yes, remove any other hard drives before installing any OS, even though I personally beg you to not install Vista!

It doesn't really make much sense to me to have a system and program drive be larger than the media storage drive. You'll end up with no space on the storage drive and loads of free space on the "OS" drive. So you'll end up with media on both drives causing an organizational mess.
In your situation, given the fact that the 500GB drive is probably a few years old, I'd stick with a single drive to keep life simple. The 500GB drive can be stuck in a USB enclosure and used to back up the "really important" files in case the unthinkable happens to the 2TB drive.
As for your system freaking out when there's two OS's on two hard drives when installed at separate times... You can approach that two ways. One way is to use a boot manager program to choose which OS you want to boot from. This is not desirable for your end result. The other way is that the system BIOS has a boot order by which it checks for boot media. When it gets to the hard drives it looks in port SATA-0 first and then upward in order until you run out of ports to check. So just make sure the drive you want to have boot first is plugged into a lower numbered SATA port and there will be no "freak-outs".

I'm with Monkeydee on a number of things with some minor variations -

1) I would keep the 500GB drive internal, but then use it for backup like he suggested. This saves you the money needed to buy an enclosure, plus you'll backup more often if you can just do it and not have to dig out the drive and USB and power cables for it. If you have multiple systems that you'd like to backup however the enclosure makes sense again unless you don't mind doing it over the network.

2) Switching things around in the BIOS should prevent a Master Boot Record mix up during the install, but I've had it not work 100% in the past using PATA drives. Even if I set the BIOS correctly I would still unplug the old drive's power connector during the initial install just to be sure, and then plug it back in afterwards and format it. Just me though.

You have all given me a few more thing to consider. Thank you for the input. Ideally I'd love to run Windows 7 on a 240GB SSD and have my media storage as a 2TB SATA. But my budget is only so much.

Thanks again and Ill let you know how this works out.

You don't even need 240GB, 120GB should be enough unless you need to install all sorts of crazy programs.

I have a 120GB drive and I seem to be fine other than I try to remove games from my system when I'm not really playing them anymore. Other than that I have my OS and all my programs installed to it as well along with a few games without a problem.

I would say unless you're the type that wants to have all their games installed at all times a 120GB should be fine.

I bought a 240GB drive when they were more than double what they are now. I am using all of 62GB of it... haha.

I lucked out on drives in the past three years so bad. Completely luck but - I upgraded my old 160GB HD with a 1TB drive for $39 right before the tsunami hit Indonesia and subsequently lead to a drive shortage which basically tripled HD prices for the next year. They still haven't fully recovered from that, and with the uptake in SSD sales, may never really. I also bought my SSD two years ago at a time when they seemed to take a big drop and then stayed fairly stagnant in price for the next year at least. Even by today's pricing what I paid wasn't far off. I guess the big drop was the 240GB's during that time, but the 120GB's have been fairly constant for the past while at the "at or just above $100" mark, which is really what I paid.

Anyway, total thread hijacking here, but I do feel a bit smug about how through no great insight or forethought on my part I somehow managed to do really well with storage in the last few years and I thought I should share.

I bought a storage array (4 1TB WD Black) right before the floods hit. The price is only now back down to what I paid for the same drives.
I didn't luck out with that SSD because 3 months after I bought it prices fell by 50%.