Adding a slave drive.

The XPS 400 uses SATA drives, while your old drive is an IDE drive.  If you only have one optical drive you can connect the drive to the cable that goes to the optical drive.  There should be an extra power connector inside.

If you have 2 optical drives, your options are to buy a PCI IDE controller card, a SATA to IDE converter, or get an external USB drive enclosure and use it as an external drive.  I opted for the latter on mt XPS 600.

Dave 

Thanks for the help. I only have one open bay for the hard drive and its at the bottom of the case next to the other SATA drive. Where is the best place to find a SATA to IDE converter or a PCI IDE controller card? Is this something that I could find at Best Buy or Frys? Since my Seagate drive is only 3 months old I do not want to give it away with the old system.

One more Question. Since my IDe drive will be going through an adapter or or controll card, do I still jumper it as a slave or to I jumper it back to a master drive?

If you go with an IDE contriller card you install it in any open PCI slot in the computer.  Here's an example.  It will include a cable and you jumper the drive as Master.

With the SATA to IDE converter (like this) you jumper the drive as Master.  It should come with instructions.

The advantage to the controller card is you can attach 2 drives if you have them.

Dave

Thanks Dave. That gives me some options on which way I want to go. Unfortunatley I only have one open bay in my new system. Is there any difference in speed between the card and the adapter. I will be setting up my new system tonight and start the process of transferring all of my data and programs. Once I have all the data transferred to the new system I will move the Seagate drive over for a backup drive.

Mike

I really haven't seen anything comparing the speed of a PCI controller vs. a SATA to IDE adapter.  If you're planning to use the drive for backup, it's probably not that much of a concern.  If you're going to be rendering video or using it for heavy duty database applications you might want to research it a bit.

If the latter two are true, you'd be better off getting another SATA drive anyway.

Dave

Using a controller card your speed may be limited if your PCI bus is rather busy, since all PCI connections share the same bandwidth. Not sure how much the adapter slows things down, though it keeps the drive to its own channel. That being said, I've never had problems with as many as 7 internal drives using PCI card IDE or IDE & SATA adapters.

Thanks for the help. I decided to add another SATA drive. I went out this weekend and bought a Seagate SATA 300GB Drive which I installed in my new XPS 400 system. At the same time a bought one of those conversion boxes for my Seagate ATA 200 GB drive. So now it is an external USB 2.0 drive which I will use for backups only. This gives me the maximum performance on my enternal drives and still allows me to use my other drive as an external backup. Thanks again for all the help.

Mike

I need help. I don't know a lot about computers but I am trying to figure out how to hook up a hard drive. I have an XPS and I went out and bought a Western Digital 160GB Sata internal HD. I understand in theory how to install it but it appears I have bought the wrong thing - I know how to attach the superconnect cable but I don't have a 4 pin power cord to use. I've had Dell computers before but not the XPS and I have never had a computer with so little power cords. I did buy the SATA drive but the connections do not look like they will work for me. Is that right? Is there any way I change one of Dell's little black pins (HDD0-3)into a 4 pin power cable????

Obviously I need a lot of help so if possible go easy on me and explain it as clearly as possible!

thanks

Ok, guys....After a few hours of sleep I think I figured it out. Can I just go out and get a regular SATA cord (as opposed to the superconnect cable) and then use the little black HDD01 cord to power it? I don't have any 4 pin power connectors which is what is prohibiting me from using the superconnect cable.

Will this work and are the cables available like at Compusa or Bestbuy (I haven't had a chance to look on line yet.

I got one email response but deleted it before I could cut and paste the name. Thank you, to whom ever sent me the email!!!!!! I did get the cables from Compusa and everything is up and running. In fact, I am thinking of getting a third hard drive!

Thanks so much!