Thanks for the reply. Good to know I can add more drives. I believe there is room for 3 hard drives, plus I have a floppy drive I am willing to take out to put a hard drive in its place.
i am about to also add a second drive to an 8400. since you did it already, can you tell me if you needed to buy a second blue cord to ru from the new drive to the mobo or do you just connect the 2 empty plugs tha are at the end of the cord that go to the first drive??
My hard drive came with a SATA cable. I just connected it from the new hard drive to the SATA connector on the mobo labeled 1. You will have to configure your BIOS. Windows explorer will not show the drive. It will show up in device manager. You will have to partition and format it. Works great. I am going to add a third soon.
thanks. i actually was given the drive, but now realize i need the ellusive cable. oddly enough, its proving tough to find on the web. even dell doesn't seem to have it. well, thanks for the advice. the search continues.
I just added a 300GB SATA as a second drive in my 8400. I just went to Best Buy and bought the SATA cable. They sell the same Belkin cables as most on-line sources.
I just Bought a Dimension 8400 and hope mine comes with 4 sata connectors like yours...now I got a question for you........since you have 2 additional SATA connector on the board, do you also have 2 additional power cables to plug it into the third or fourth hard drive?
That's a good question. :-) I'm not 100% certain but If I recall, there were only two SATA power connectors total. Which sort of makes sense since there is only physical space to mount two 3.5" hard disks. The SATA power connectors are unique. There are still some conventional 4-pin molex power connectors to supply power to the 5 1/4" devices.
A better question would be - where are you going to mount the third disk? Power is probably easy to come by. I'm sure by now there are Y-cables for SATA power connectors available. You can probably also find cables that convert the 4-pin molex to SATA power.
One reason for multiple connectors is the motherboards are somewhat standard. Other larger cases could have bays for additional hard drives. Also, IDE will go away completely at some point.
Four SATA = Two IDE. Two IDE channels can handle four devices (1-Master, 1-Slave per channel). Since you can't daisey-chain SATA, it requires four connectors just to get the same four device capability.
Also, at some point the DVD and CD-ROM drives will be SATA and will need the extra connectors. I believe SATA optical drives are actually available NOW but Dell isn't necessarily installing them as standard peipherals.
Yep... it should work fine. Reminds me of long ago -- I had a friend with a Leading Edge PC which was only capable of having two 5 1/4" floppies. He took it to a shop which claimed to be able to install a 20MB hard disk. Sure enough... when he got it back it had a 20MB hard disk
DUCT TAPED to the power supply frame. :smileyvery-happy:
Well - yes and no. :-) It needs to be securely mounted in some fashion so that it doesn't flop around and crash the heads. It also needs to be in a supported orientation - although drives these days seem to handle about anything. Also, and most importantly - it needs to be positioned in such a way that it gets proper cooling or else you'll have problems. Not only does the third drive need to remain cool but it's position must not interfere with the air flow for other components.
So as long as I place it where it doesn't crash the heads and where it gets cooling and does not interfere with the air flow of other components, I guess wouln't have any problems....
shesagordie
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March 1st, 2005 20:00
jeffchaucer
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March 1st, 2005 21:00
sxklaw
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March 2nd, 2005 01:00
jeffchaucer
i am about to also add a second drive to an 8400. since you did it already, can you tell me if you needed to buy a second blue cord to ru from the new drive to the mobo or do you just connect the 2 empty plugs tha are at the end of the cord that go to the first drive??
much appreciated
jeffchaucer
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March 2nd, 2005 13:00
sxklaw
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March 2nd, 2005 23:00
shesagordie
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March 3rd, 2005 00:00
sxklaw.
You can buy a SATA cable from the following.
http://www.cablestogo.com/product_list.asp?cat%5Fid=927
Bev.
jgayman
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March 3rd, 2005 14:00
I just added a 300GB SATA as a second drive in my 8400. I just went to Best Buy and bought the SATA cable. They sell the same Belkin cables as most on-line sources.
chispas109
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May 16th, 2005 12:00
jgayman
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May 16th, 2005 12:00
jgayman
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May 16th, 2005 13:00
A better question would be - where are you going to mount the third disk? Power is probably easy to come by. I'm sure by now there are Y-cables for SATA power connectors available. You can probably also find cables that convert the 4-pin molex to SATA power.
chispas109
9 Posts
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May 16th, 2005 13:00
jgayman
232 Posts
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May 16th, 2005 14:00
One reason for multiple connectors is the motherboards are somewhat standard. Other larger cases could have bays for additional hard drives. Also, IDE will go away completely at some point.
Four SATA = Two IDE. Two IDE channels can handle four devices (1-Master, 1-Slave per channel). Since you can't daisey-chain SATA, it requires four connectors just to get the same four device capability.
Also, at some point the DVD and CD-ROM drives will be SATA and will need the extra connectors. I believe SATA optical drives are actually available NOW but Dell isn't necessarily installing them as standard peipherals.
jgayman
232 Posts
0
May 16th, 2005 14:00
jgayman
232 Posts
0
May 16th, 2005 14:00
Well - yes and no. :-) It needs to be securely mounted in some fashion so that it doesn't flop around and crash the heads. It also needs to be in a supported orientation - although drives these days seem to handle about anything. Also, and most importantly - it needs to be positioned in such a way that it gets proper cooling or else you'll have problems. Not only does the third drive need to remain cool but it's position must not interfere with the air flow for other components.
chispas109
9 Posts
0
May 16th, 2005 14:00