Adding 2nd hard drive

Question

I have a 160GB ATA/ATAPI-6 hard drive that came with my Dell Dimension 8300. This morning I bought a Seagate 500GB Ultra ATA/100 hard drive to add as my 2nd hard drive. The 500GB came with a cable that doesn't match the back of my 160GB. So I'm not sure how I can get the 2 to communicate (master and slave). I would like the 500GB as my slave with the 160GB as my master. The 160GB has a small little plug going from the back of of the drive to my motherboard but the 500GB has a wide gray cable with little squares on it, so there's no room to hook them together. Did I buy the wrong type of drive? Is there anything I can do?

shesagordie · Answer

xxbrankxx

You need to buy an IDE 80wire 40pin cable,

http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/cabling/deskstar.htm

Connect the cable to the motherboard connector PRI IDE and to your IDE hard drive, again remember set the hard drive's jumpers to "Cable Select" and connect the drive to the end cable connector.
You can use one of the 4-pin molex power connectors.
Enter the Setup and check that the second hard drive, is set to auto [on].

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/dim8300/sm/techov.htm#1102196

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/dim8300/sm/drives.htm#1103012

In your situation, there's no need to move the drives, as instructed by the Dell procedures, this is for installation of two IDE HDs.
As already noted, the SATA hard drive must be the C:/ boot drive.
After installing the hard drive, you need to enter the BIOS setup and check the the new drive is set to auto [on].
In order for windows XP to recognize the second hard drive, it must be partitioned and formatted. These are generic instructions for installing an additional hard drive using Windows XP Disk Management, they are by Seagate, but apply to all brands.

http://www.seagate.com/support/kb/disc/howto/install_xp_disk_mgmt.html

Personally, as there's already a SATA hard drive installed, then I would install a second SATA, instead of the IDE hard drive.

Bev.

shesagordie · Answer

xxbrankxx wrote:   'The new drive came with the cable that you said I need. But there's nowhere on the back of my old harddrive to hook it up to. There's a small little plug that goes from the back of the harddrive to the motherboard. I'm not sure what else I can do....'   It sounds as if you have a SATA C: / primary hard drive.   As I posted, you connect the IDE cable to the motherboard connector PRI IDE, check the links, I provided   Bev.

xxbrankxx · Answer

The new drive came with the cable that you said I need. But there's nowhere on the back of my old harddrive to hook it up to. There's a small little plug that goes from the back of the harddrive to the motherboard. I'm not sure what else I can do....

xxbrankxx · Answer

Ok, I installed the drive, everything seems to be installed correct (cable wise) now it's the BIOS setting up part that I need help on. My pc didn't find the drive and when I went into BIOS I clicked enable the drive but it says 'Unknown Device'. I don't know if there's more things that I need to enable/disable to get it to find the drive. Any more help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you so much.

shesagordie · Answer

xxbrankxx   Did you set the HD's jumpers to 'Cable Select' and connect it to end connector of the IDE cable?  If that does not work ,then set the jumpers to 'Master' and again connect to the end of the cable.   Bev.

shesagordie · Answer

xxbrankxx   First check the jumpers, the setting is not 'Slave', its either 'Cable Select' or 'Master' as I posted.   Scroll down to IDE Primary Drive 0: The setting should be Auto.   http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/dim8300/sm/syssetup.htm#1104309   Bev.

xxbrankxx · Answer

It should be hooked up ok. It's the BIOS I think is causing the problem. I'm not sure what to select. And wouldn't the new hard drive be set to slave?

xxbrankxx · Answer

Hard drive still won't read. It says SATA Secondary Drive 0 Not Found. Then it says Primary Drive 1 Not Found. Then I go into BIOS, this is what it says:   SATA Primary Drive - Hard Drive SATA Secondary Drive - Unknown Primary Master - Off Primary Slave - Unknown Secondary Master - CD-ROM Device Secondary Slave - Off IDE Drive UDMA - On

xxbrankxx · Answer

I still can't get my pc to find the hard drive. So I decided that I'm gonna go return it but when I took the hard drive out my pc won't even boot up unless I put it back in. So I have a hard drive that I can't use but if I take it out I, I can't even boot up. Any ideas?

Storage, Drives & Media

Adding 2nd hard drive

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