I'm gradually buying bits and bobs and building up a PC into a case I got given (it's nothing special, only a P3 chip, 512 ram and mobo, but better than the Celeron D and 128ram crap I am on now, lol)

Anyway, my hard drive arrived today, but I don't know how to connect it up

Looking at the mobo, I have three slots to plug those IDE ribbon cables into. ! shorter one the flooy is plugged into, then a longer one the CD Rom is plugged into, then another longer one with nothing plugged into it (I was gonna plug the DVD-R/CD-R drive into this one later on) So where do I plug the hdd into? I can't find another one of these slots?

I also don't have a ribbon cable with a wide enough plug (it needs a 40 pin or something I'm told?)

If I got a cable and plugged it into the last available slot, where do I plug the DVD/CDR drive later on? Or can I slave something off the spare connectors on the ribbons I already have (my guess is I can't slave the hdd off the ribbon coming out of the CD-Rom no?)

Help me, I'm dumb

 

Smaller slot is for floppy drive, that's right...

The other two are IDE1 and IDE2. In other words, imagine it as primary IDE channel (which can hold two IDE devices - hard drive, DVD-Rom, CDRW, etc) and secondary IDE channel.

Now, as long as the jumper switches (see the little plastic "bridge" switches on the back of the drive?) are set correctly, according to the diagram somewhere on the drive itself, then the computer should work out which are plugged in where (set them to Cable Select, or CS, to do this - saves you loads of hassle).

You can have two devices plugged in, per IDE channel, so if you've only got a DVD/CDR drive and that one hard-drive, that will work fine on that existing cable & channel...

 

Right, think I got you. I looked inside the old PC I currently using and that has the same three slots aswell. 1 for floppy, then the DVD drive is connected to the CD drive and plugged into one of the IDE slots and the HDD is plugged into the other slot. On that machine the mobo is labled IDE 1 and IDE 2 like you said (can't see it on this new mobo tho) but the DVD and CD are plugged IDE 2, HDD is into IDE1

So am I right in thinking it don't matter which one the devices are plugged into as long as these jumper switches (lost me there ) are right?

Am I also right in thinking that I can connect two CD drives into one IDE slot and two hard drives into the other?

 

Right, so I just tried a bunch of stuff.

I connected the 40pin IDE ribbon into the CDR drive, then on the came cable I plugged it into the HDD, then into one of the IDE ports.

Turned it on (HDD is blank, nothing on it) and it wouldn't detect the HDD. It detected the CD drive (as primary it said) but slave and secondary said "NONE"

SO I unplugged the CD drive and only plugged the HDD in, turned on again, it detected the HDD but said "DISK BOOT ERROR, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND TRY AGAIN" or something - I'm guessing this is cos the HDD is blank?

NOw I found the jumper thing on the HDD but typical of my luck it don't say what setting is what! Then I looked on the back of the CD drive and it had three settings "CS" "SL" "MS" - which I reckon must be "cable Select" "Slave" and "Master" - trouble it is missing the little plastic thing to select which one I want!!!!!!!!!!!!

So basically I can only boot up with ither the CD or the HDD, but not both together - which I need to do to load windows on it. And when I come to plug the DVD drive in aswell, I will have the same problem I reckon with the missing jumper thing on the CD drive....

Goddam PC's!!!!!

 

--

 

All the IDE slots on the mobo are black (on the older PC one is blue the others are black tho, so more helpfull)

Hopefully Saturday I should be able to get hold of a few bits n bobs like another 40pin ribbon and some jumper thingies so maybe I'll get it working then....

The HDD is a Maxtor DiamondMax9 80gb drive... It's a new drive, but kind of second hand (ie, it's still sealed, never used, but not in original box, no instructions etc) gonna scour google see if I can find anything, unless one of you helpfull guys on here can enlighten me?

As far as Primary and Secondary IDE ports go, I think I know which is which as all I have to do is when I get the second ribbon is plug the CD into one slot and the HDD into the other, then boot up the PC and hit del to go to set up and it should tell me what is hooked up to each IDE port. Ideally I guess I want the HDD as secondary and the CD and DVD slaving off Primary and primary slave? Then later when I hook in another HDD I can just slave it off the 80gb one (in secondary slot) ?

 

--

 

Thrush lad, eaiest way to do this is :

Hard drive on IDE 1 set as Master using the jumper settings on the drive itself, these are located inbetween where the IDE cable goes, and where the power goes. Just use a pair of tweezer's to pull it off, then put it on the appropriate set of pins

I would then use the 2nd IDE channel for the CD-ROM Drives.

I have 2 x 120 gig Western Digital Drives on IDE 1, and a Pioneer DVD Rom and Pioneer DVD/RW on IDE 2

Simple to setup once you get the hang of master / slave settings.

If, you don't have any jumpers, then you can use CS <cable select>

HTH Pal

 

Xpack - thats exactly what I need! Cheers buddy

Yeah thats what I'm gonna do Dan, thanks Should be getting hold of the extra ribbon, some jumper thingies, etc tonight, so gonna have a bash at it later on, or maybe 2morrow.

Still, my mobo don't say IDE 1 or 2 on it, and the slots are the same colour So I'm guessing that it should be okay no matter which slot the devices are plugged into right?

I only have the one HDD now so thats just gonna be set to Master. And the two CD drives : gonna set the DVD/CD writer to Master and the CD-ROM to Slave, so I am guessing that I need the ribbon set up so that one end goes in to the (master) DVD/CD-R, the middle (slave) plug goes into the (slave) CD-ROM, and the end plug goes into IDE right? So they should show up as drives D and E (with HDD being drive C - correct?

Then the usb car reader should show up as drives E, F, G, H, I etc....

(why is there never a drive "B"?)

 

Drive B is assigned for 5 1/2 " floppy's

The IDE cable with one connector at one end for the motherboard, and 2 for the drives, what you will need to do, is plug the cable into the motherboard, then, plug the bottom of 2 connectors into your slave drive, then the upper in the master

You'll need to boot of the CD-ROM in order to install windows. Are there no markings at all on the motherboard to say IDE-1 IDE-2 or anything m8 ?

 

I hope this picture helps a little m8

 

Dan - got everything hooked in and working, but got a new MAJOR problem - please see new thread