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Adding a third internal HDD to a Dimension 9100
Hi,
I'd like to add a third disk drive to my Dimension 9100 and have a few questions I hope somebody may be able to answer.
1) Does the Dimension 9100 support SATA level 3? I was considering adding a Western Digital WD2001FASS Caviar Black 2TB drive, which is a SATA 3 drive.
2) My machine came with two 160GB drives in a RAID 0 configuration giving me a 320GB C: drive. If I add a third drive will it have to be part of the RAID configuration or can/must it be configured as a separate drive?
3) Will the power supply be strong enough to support a third disk drive? The spec of the machine is still as delivered by Dell.
4) The machine's SATA power connectors are all in use so I will have to add a converter cable which connects the new drive to one of the older type molex connectors which is still unused. Does it matter which molex connector I connect it to?
5) The only free drive bay is where the floppy drive would have been years ago. Is there a way to get the left side case panel (when viewed from the front of the machine) off so I can screw the left side bolts into the drive?
Thanks in advance for any help you can offer.
osprey4
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July 29th, 2011 17:00
Hi Frank Rizzo,
I believe the Dim 9100 supports SATA 1.5 Gb/s, but a 3.0 Gb/s drive should be backward compatible. You can add a third drive to an existing RAID, and the power supply should be no problem. Your power connection and placement strategy is fine. See if this section of the manual helps.
Good luck!
jackshack
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August 6th, 2011 13:00
You should leave the settings alone. You state that you already have a RAID 0 working in RAID Autodetect/AHCI, and while most computers I've seen are set to RAID On in this configuration, why mess with something that is already working. I would also note that the controller on the Dimension 9100 is capable of supporting RAID 0 and RAID 1. Both of these configurations support only two hard drives, so I doubt that you could add the third drive to the mix even if you wanted to do so.
Windows sees a RAID as a single disk drive. So far as Windows is concerned you now have two drives; the RAID which has your operating system installed upon it, and the second is your new WD Caviar Black. The only thing you now require is to bring up Disk Management and use it to partition and format the second drive. Windows will assign a letter to the drive after you have done that. If you have card readers or other USB storage devices, however, you may find that the letter D has been assigned already. If so, you will not be able to assign the letter D to your new hard drive until you have re-assigned the letters for your card readers or other USB storage devices.
Frank-Rizzo
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August 6th, 2011 11:00
Hi osprey4,
Thanks for your feedback, it helped me out. I have now just installed the Western Digital WD2001FASS Caviar Black drive on SATA port 3. After enabling the port in the BIOS and restarting, it correctly identified the drive but I am not sure about which SATA option I should select. The options I have are:
RAID Autodetect / AHCI (current setting)
RAID Autodetect / ATA
RAID on
Combination
I would like to install the new drive so that it is separate from the two currently configured in a RAID configuration. The reason for this is that I am editing some large video files (several GB each) and my new editing software recommends that the video files being worked on should be stored on a drive other than the one on which the OS is installed for performance reasons.
Which SATA option do I need to achieve this and are there any dangers in changing the option? (it mentions that the Combination option could alter the drive letter order or something). I'd like to be able to keep the original two drives as the C: drive and add the new one as a D: drive.
Thanks in advance!
Frank-Rizzo
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August 6th, 2011 15:00
Thanks for the swift reply, JackShack. That clarified things for me. Drive is up and running now.
jackshack
6.4K Posts
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August 7th, 2011 14:00
We are happy to have helped. Best of luck to you.