Hard drive arrived. Installation advice needed.

[qwertman]

Ok now the new hard drive just arrived and i opened up my pc and to my horror theres no extra IDE connecters left!

Now I need a solution and wonder if any of you tech savvy bunch can help me.
The IDE cable that goes from my motherboard to my hard drive only has one connecter on it, to my memory there is supposed to be an extra one in the middle of the cable, but mine does not. Is that normal? If I buy a new cable will it work?

There is also another IDE cable on my mobo with two connecters. Problem is they are used up by my two dvd drives. If I disconnect one of them and plug them on the new hard drive will my PC detect it? Asking first cos these connecters are a b*tch to disconnect.

Also there is no sticker on the hard drive so i dont know which jumper is which? Which set is normally the slave one?

[PhilEnfield]

Before answering your questions .... here's one for you, because the answer may depend on what you are trying to achieve :

Are you going to use the new drive just as an extra storage drive, or are you going to use this as your boot drive and install a fresh Operating System on it ?

[qwertman]

I was planning on making it an extra storage drive, but seeing the circumstances, I might need to make it a primary boot drive. What i want though is to have both drive connected temperarly so i can transfer files to the new drive first.

I just tried putting the new drive on the secondary ide cable and setting it to master, with my dvd burner on slave, and also leaving the old hd on the primary cable on master. not working. Any ideas?

[M&M Blues]

Not to fret. Just go out and buy an IDE cable with two connectors on it. Most motherboards support up to four IDE devices - two on the primary channel and two on the secondary. More likely than not, your existing HD is set up as the master on the primary channel so you would configure the new HD as the slave.

To find out the jumper settings, go to the support pages of the HD manufactuer. There is sure to be information there about jumper settings.

If you have an OEM computer (Dell, Compaq, etc.) the drives probably are set up to cable select (CS). That means the drive attached to the end of the IDE cable will automatically be recognized as the master while the drive in the middle connector will be the slave.

[PhilEnfield]

Yep ... as M&M Blues says, just grab another IDE Cable and connect your new drive on the middle connection and set it to Slave.
Looking at the back of the drive, there should be 3 sets of pins to the left of the IDE socket. Normally the 2 pins nearest to the IDE socket will be Master, the middle 2 Slave and far left Cable Select.

HTH

Also the boot drive must be the Primary Master ... no choice here

[qwertman]

looks like a new ide purchase is inevitable. I almost got the drive working. BIOS can now detect the drive but its complaining about not having an 80 conductor cable, and wont show up on windws. thought to myself thats weird then opened up the pc again and alas: the cheapskate that built this pc only put an 80 wire one on the primary and a 40 wire on the secondary :mad:

[PhilEnfield]

Just another thought ..... if you put the new drive on as the Secondary Master and changed the jumpers correctly for both drives on that channel, this should have worked ok.
I take it you have partitioned and formatted the drive yeah ?

[PhilEnfield]

LOL ... looks like our posts crossed.

[qwertman]

lol. didn't think of doing a format and partition. off to do it now. thanks`

[qwertman]

sorted now. thanks for your help m&m blues and PhilEnfield.

All I had to do was download the setup software from teh Maxtor site.