adding extra hard drives and crud - Tech Support Forums

Zidane · October 31st, 2002, 05:07 AM

i currently have 2 hard drives (IDE) and 1 32x cdrom (IDE) now i want to add another hard drive (due to the %*$#*$ amount of space i have) now i have to IDE cable ports on my mother board NOTE(i have the primary hard drive and cdrom drive on the primary cable,hard drive set as master cd-rom set as slave(fujitsu hard drive,primary hard drive that is) and i have a 450 meg hard drive already on my computer (428 meg western digital compressed to 1.68 gig) and i want to add a 540 meg western digital but im to the point of pulling my hair out what do i set each jumper on the back to (please reply before i go bald hehe) i need to know what i set the jumpers to and if i should put the prim hd and crud on the secondary cable NOTE (the IDE cables have 3 plugs on them 1 for pluging into the mother-board and 2 for puting in extra stuff) PLEASE HELP ME i set my last computer on fire due to the frustration

OuTpaTienT · October 31st, 2002, 05:28 AM

First off, you shouldn't have a cdrom drive and a HD on the same channel if you can help it. You definitley should not have a cdrom drive on your main ide channel (primary).

This is what you should do;

- Place your primary boot drive (hopefully that's also the fastest drive) as master on IDE channel 1.

- Place you secondary hard drive as slave on IDE channel 1.

- place your slowest hard drive as master on IDE channel 2.

- Place your cdrom drive as slave on IDE channel 2.

When connecting the cable you should make sure the drives that are master are connected to the end connection of the cable. The slave drives should use the connector that in the middle of the cable.

As far as jumper settings, there is no way for us to know that. If you're lucky it will indicate on the drive casing somewhere the jumper settings. If not then try putting the exact model number of the drive into a search engine (like Google) and see if maybe you can find some info on it. Otherwise, trial and error. I've done it before, but I certainly don't recommend it.

Zidane · October 31st, 2002, 05:32 AM

also if i i could find my SCSI Adaptec card i'd put on some more hard drives and cd-rom drives Dam i love building my own computers im pulling a lot outta my p1 233mhz MMX compaq but its home made computer hehehe it has some problems like my lack of hard drive space i currently have 4.89 gigs and as in my other post i need more space but cant figure out the f&*%ing jumpers because they arent labeled 1 2 3 4 they are blank im using windows 98 plus SE

Zidane · October 31st, 2002, 05:36 AM

well i cant move the hd and cdrom to the prime ide and sec ide because my cables arent that damn long i had to make brackets to mount the extra hard drives

OuTpaTienT · October 31st, 2002, 05:45 AM

Well, I'm not sure what to tell ya. You're obviously on a budget if you're spending time messing with hard drives that are only a few hundred MB in size. So I won't tell ya to buy new cables.

If it were me I would make the items fit within reach of the cables. I don't care if I had to drill holes in the case frame and screw the hard drives to it in vertical position...I'd find some way to make it work.

If you say it's impossible then you are simply not using your imagination.

Zidane · October 31st, 2002, 06:05 AM

im using my imagination
ill turn that damn mobo sideways if i have to hahaha and ill use another case (mentally slaps himself damn i have over 100 diffrent cases i found in the junk yard ill put the mobo in it to mount the new hard drives (hey those mb hd's are good when compressed