Installing new HD

stuckey6225

Yes, for the D-8400, for the C: / boot drive, you need a SATA hard drive, plus this system only supports two ATA/IDE drives [aka PATA].  If you already have two optical drives installed, then to add an additional ATA/IDE hard drive, you need to install a PCI IDE controller card, or use an external IDE USB 2.0 powered enclosure.

 

Bev.

So, I should exchange the ATA for a SATA drive instead so I can run two SATA drives?

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stuckey6225 wrote:

So, I should exchange the ATA for a SATA drive instead so I can run two SATA drives?

Yes.

stuckey6225

 

Try to buy either a Seagate, Western Digital, Samsung or Hitachi.

Maxtor is not a good buy at this time, due to high failure rates.  Check the lenght of the warranty, there's one to five years on hard drives.

 

Bev.

Thanks for your help. I will exchange the Seagate 160GB ATA for an SATA. The one I brought comes with the five year warranty, which sold me on it.

stuckey6225

 

You're welcome.

 

Bev.

OK, new drive went in fine. Partitioned and formated and reinstalled Windows XP from the Dell reinstall CD. System booted up fine to the new drive.

Problem: The new drive is Drive F: and the old secondary is drive C:. There is a problem with the logical designation.

The Seagate 160GB SATA had no jumpers, and the original drive is a Western Digital 80GB drive with one jumper. The jumper settings on that drive were SSC (default setting) PM2, OPT1, and OPT2. I tried all and with no jumper. No difference.

 

 

Any suggestions?

stuckey6225

 

Did you disconnect both the data and power cables from the old SATA hard drive, prior to reinstalling XP on the new drive?

 

Connect the new boot drive to the SATA-0 [blue] connector and the old drive to SATA-1, check the setup that SATA-1 is set to auto [on].

 

  http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/dimxpsg3/SM/techov.htm#wp1052309

 

In XP, the only way to change the assigned letter on the boot drive, is to reinstall XP,

 

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;307844&sd=tech

http://www.petri.co.il/change_a_drive_letter_in_windows_xp.htm

 

After installing XP, reconnect the old SATA drive and you can use XP's disk management to format and partition it, after transfering any data you wish to save.

 

Bev.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

stuckey6225

 

Pleased to have helped and happy to hear that you have the system running.  :)

 

Bev.

Thanks for your quick reply. While I was waiting for one, I decided to go with just the new drive as you recommend. I installed it solo, partitioned, formated and reinstalled WinXP. All is well with it. System see's it as c: drive. I will hook up the old one just to transfer my files, but have decided to go with an external 120GB for backup purposes.

 

Thanks again for your help

 

Wish I was aware of this forum when I was having fits with my old Dell 8100!