rrf

i got a new hard drive and installed it, but i would still like to use my old drive as a second hard drive.

ok, so... there is the cable from the motherboard with two connectors... the main connector is plugged into the new hard drive. then the power supply cable is plugged in to the new hard drive as well. now, as i install the slave hard drive, i plug in the second connector to the slave hard drive, and do i plug in another power supply cable to that? and do i have to worry about the jumper settings? can anyone help? thanks

*i hope that makes sense

Kadath

Every drive needs a power cable to it. Whether you need to mess with the jumpers is determined by the drive itself. Some drives are set to cable select by default, but that's drive specific. What's the drive make and model?

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Johnny Rotten

New hard drives usually have their jumpers set by default to make them the primary drive, so you'll have to wiggle those around to the right position (using the documentation) so that the old drive boots first. The new drive should come with a floppy disk that will format the drive and, if you want, copy everything over bit for bit. But if you want to boot from the new drive, you'll have to move the jumpers around.

Keep in mind that drives on the same cable can only go as fast as the slowest one in the chain. If both are 7200RPM jobs, then it won't make much difference. If the old drive is 5400RPM or slower, you'll want to put it on a separate data cable in order to get the most performance out of the new one. Make sure the new one it's plugged into the "IDE1" port on the motherboard, where it will be labeled it tiny letters.

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bermuDa

rtfm, cable and jumper settings will be contained within

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rrf

k cool, i got it worked out.... thanks