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If you want to buy a book on Building and Maintaining PC's that would be a good start.
I dont know of a place on the web for free. Sorry.
It is not that hard once you've done it a few times.
Usually you will need a screwdrivers, a ribbon cable, and maybe some jumpers.
by dukebytes
I'll assume that it is an IDE drive that you are trying to install.
If you are going to daisy chain two drives together on one interface - you will need to have a ribbon cable that has 3 connections on it. One drive will have to be set as masterand the other will need to be set to slave. The jumper settings should be screen painted on the drive somewhere - If they are not - go to the web and look up the settings on the drive and figure out how you need to set the jumpers.
You might be able to use a second IDE interface off of the motherboard to connect the drive. If that is the case ? you might just need another cable and then just plug it in and boot the machine. It would be like having the main drive and a CD rom connected on one cable and then the 2nd drive on the other interface.
But it might be connected with the main drive on one interface and the CD on the other - then you would need to hook it up the 1st way.
Oh and here is a link to some of the BIOS info that you MIGHT need. http://www.hardwarecentral.com/hardwarecentral/tutorials/28/1/
And here is a good pic of the dual cable that you would need.
http://www.shentech.com/36inidedualh.html
Good luck,
Duke
by lynng1201
by jheal
We would be happy to help you. Please provide the Make and model of both the existing drive and the new drive, I will tell you exactly what to do. Also provide the approximate age of your PC so that it can be determined if you are likely to need aBIOS update.
I would recommend against connecting a drive on the same channel as a CDROM. The CDROM will cause a performance degradation on the HDD. Don't do it unless you have no choice.
Some considerations:
Do yuou have physical space inside the chassis for another drive?
Will your BIOS handle it?
Do you have an available power tap?
Set you existing drive to master and the new drive to slave if you wish to preserve your current OS.
Don't forget that before you can use the new drive it will need to be partitioned and formatted.
Hope this helps,
James
by dukebytes
You still might have to mess around with the jumpers to get it to see the drive. Some systems will see the drive and use it accordingly if the jumper is set to CS - computer select. But I would still set one to master and one to slave - no questions that way :)
Duke
by jheal
and it harly ever is necessary... Don't do it.
James
by mikeconn
Can you set the second hard drive up as a second master on a seperate cable? If so how
do you do it so as to not have any conflicts
with another hard drive?
Mike
by dpalsen
You can set the second up as a master, at least assuming you have a second channel, but it's usually best to make sure that the CD is on the second channel and both hard drives are on the first. you'll usually want the CD as the last on the IDE heirarchy. It's just easier that way.
-Dave
by jheal
You cannot avoid altering the default config. of a new hard drive, unless you install it stand-alone. Some drives default to stand-alone/Master, but most don't. Besides I'm sure you will want to slave your new drive, that way you won't have to mess with an OS install.
James
by lynng1201
It's an HP 233 Vectra VL it's about 3yrs old.
The new drive is a 20GB Western Digital. The drive in the PC has no name on it.I don't have to connect it to the same channel as the CD-Rom. I have the power tap. I don't know how to check the BIOs.I have the space in the chassis.
thanks again for all your help
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