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Add used 30G hard drive as slave
I have an old HP w/ 98se which I replaced the hard drive 2 years ago. Obviously the system is outdated. Just got a "like new" Dell Dimension B110. Recovered it to factory specs, updated it from XP SP2 to SP3 and all other Microsoft updates. Want to add old hard drive from HP PC as a slave for back up. It's only 2 years old. Works good. How do I erase old drive and what do I need to do once I install it on my Dell?
jackshack
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July 11th, 2009 14:00
If your primary IDE cable to your existing hard drive has a connector for a slave drive, all you need to do is make sure that the old drive is strapped for cable select (CS), plug the middle connector of the IDE cable into the drive, plug a power connector into it and you are set.
Only problem with this that I know about is that Dell used to equip their lower end computers with an IDE cable good for only one drive, and there is no bay that allows you to physically mount the second drive. A bracket for the second drive can be found HERE. A three connector IDE cable can be found HERE. The blue connector goes to the motherboard, the black connector at the end goes to your boot drive, and the gray connector in the middle goes to the slave.
Dell never intended this computer to support two hard drives, so there are no instructions in the B110 service manual for mounting a second drive. The chassis appears to be the same as the D2400, however, and I know that computer will accept a second hard drive if you obtain the material in the links I gave you. You can therefore use the instructions for a second hard drive given in the Dimension 4600 service manual found HERE (Click on Drives).
crankley
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October 27th, 2009 06:00
JackShack, thanks for the terrific information. My Dimension 8400 recently began dying (appears to be the motherboard) and so I took over my daughter's high school B110 (she's off to college this year with a new laptop, the reason a new one for me is not an option). The 80GB hard drive in it is almost maxed out and I wanted to add another but looking in the box there was no where to mount it and the ribbon cable obviously only had one connector. Although the Dell specs seemed to indicate it wasn't doable, I wasn't sure if this was a technical impossibility or just that Dell had chintzed out on the configuration, so I checked here -- questions answered. The Centrix site is great-very clean layout; ordering was a snap. The diagrams are fantastic--they give me complete confidence that this is going to work.
Thanks again.