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SCSI and IDE hard drives

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3 replies

by brucea52

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I have a PC that has a primary SCSI hard drive that is a bit smallish and I would like to add a second or slave drive but do not want to purchase another SCSI drive. Am I able to add an IDE drive to the PC? The primary IDE controller doesn't have a cable plugged into it. I am running XP on a slightly older computer.

3 replies

by stress junkie

Just make sure that your motherboard does not automatically select the new IDE drive as a primary boot device. If your motherboard continues to boot from the SCSI drive then XP will happily add your new hardware to its configuration and you can use it as a data-only storage device.

Of course you could have tested this in less time than it took you to write your question and wait for an answer.

by techexec2

"...Of course you could have tested this in less time than it took you to write your question and wait for an answer..."

Are you suggesting that this guy should be more adventurous about trial and error? :-)

I agree. You gotta try stuff and learn by trial and error. And, this one is an easy one.

But, he might not have an IDE drive handy to test with and doesn't want to buy one in order to try it.

You're right about the "if", though. If the BIOS doesn't automatically continue to boot from the SCSI drive, and if the BIOS does not allow a manual setting that specifies this, this guy will not be able to simply add an IDE drive for data to this particular system.

So, stress junkie is right. You simply must try it and find out.

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