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edg126

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January 21st, 2007 20:00

Adding a secondary storage Hard Drive? Read this

Yesterday I went to move my old backup storage harddrive to my new dell Dimension.  It used the old EIDE cables, which was fine, I needed a new harddrive to prevent failures.  I purchased a western digital 160 GB SATA hard drive from best buy.  Here is something I learned:
 
Using a secure SATA cable (where the power and data cable are attached, and come out of only one cable that goes into the motherboard)  will not fit in the standard blue hard drive holder kit provided.  You MUST use the single data ata cable.  Make sure when you buy the harddrive it does not contain the secure cable.  In my experience over the past 24 hours, western digital uses the secure, whereas seagate does not. 
 
You need to use the supplied P5 cable as the power source, or else the bios will not recognize the new harddrive.
 
Switch the cd ata cable that is next to hd1 with the other empty sata adapter, and place the hd2 adapter in that spot.
 
Go into bios, turn on all sata ports.  Restart, then place in hard drive installation disk to install.
 
I spent a good 5 hours mucking around with my desktop and case trying to get the WD hd to work, even took a drill to the case to get it to fit.  The seagate hd took less than 5 minutes to install from opening the package to being able to write to it.  Just wanted to save someone some headaches and time.
 
-ed
 
 

rickmktg

2 Intern

 • 

11.9K Posts

January 21st, 2007 21:00


edg126 wrote:
Yesterday I went to move my old backup storage harddrive to my new dell Dimension.  It used the old EIDE cables, which was fine, I needed a new harddrive to prevent failures.  I purchased a western digital 160 GB SATA hard drive from best buy.  Here is something I learned:
 
Using a secure SATA cable (where the power and data cable are attached, and come out of only one cable that goes into the motherboard)  will not fit in the standard blue hard drive holder kit provided.  You MUST use the single data ata cable.  Make sure when you buy the harddrive it does not contain the secure cable.  In my experience over the past 24 hours, western digital uses the secure, whereas seagate does not. 
 
You need to use the supplied P5 cable as the power source, or else the bios will not recognize the new harddrive.
 
Switch the cd ata cable that is next to hd1 with the other empty sata adapter, and place the hd2 adapter in that spot.
 
Go into bios, turn on all sata ports.  Restart, then place in hard drive installation disk to install.
 
I spent a good 5 hours mucking around with my desktop and case trying to get the WD hd to work, even took a drill to the case to get it to fit.  The seagate hd took less than 5 minutes to install from opening the package to being able to write to it.  Just wanted to save someone some headaches and time.
 
-ed
 
You never say what model Dell you have, but you would NEVER need a drill to get a drive to fit...

mombodog

2 Intern

 • 

12.7K Posts

January 22nd, 2007 21:00

Western digital uses the secure cable because their drives support the New power connection as well as the legacy molex connector, they provide this cable to block off the new sata power connector on the hard drive so people do not plug in both the new and legacy power cables at the same time and smoke the drive. I found this in the fine print in the installation booklet. I found this a little confusing on the first WD Raptor dive I purchased also.
 
Seagate does not provide this Legacy power option on their Drives. I prefer these drives over WD.

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