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Step By Step to Adding A Hard Drive

Jan 01 '01 Write an essay on this topic.

Firstly you should first of all buy the hard drive, depending on what size and speed you want will determine the price. E.G. a 7,200rpm Fujitsu drive with 20.5Gb of storage cost me Ł90, but in shops may cost about Ł110 ($154). As the size and speed goes up the price barely goes up as a similar 10.2Gb, 7200rpm could be Ł80 or Ł90 in shops. Not much difference in price but with a little extra cash you get a lot more space.
So once you have you drive the next step is to open your PC.
You can buy the drive last if you want, so you can get used to all the wire and slots. But follow the steps below: Remember to unplug the PC! and EARTH Your self on a radiator, or case (when plugged in). I recommend you read this page before doing any thing, print it out (personal use only) to use when/if you decide to take the challenge. Once you know how to do it, it will be easier in the future.

Step 1. Get you motherboard manual out and look for the word IDE or E-IDE, this will tell you where they are located on the board. Then open up the PC, there will be two IDE/E-IDE slots. Depending on what hardware came with your PC you have to check what stuffs in there.

Step 2. If there's a single hard drive with a CD-rom attached to the IDE cable then you have to by another IDE cable (make sure its a two way one). If there's two cables with a CD-Rom and hard drive, check if there is a plug on the white/grey cable (leading to the Hard drive), if there isn't buy another IDE cable, for about Ł3/$5, (make sure its a two way one)

Step 3. Hopefully you will have a plug now spare. Originally the hard disk should be on the Primary IDE channel, so you can if you want add the extra drive to either Primary or Secondary channel. The CD-Rom drive can go on any. Basically, the hard drives should go on the Primary channel and the Cd-Rom drive on the secondary channel. Remember two drives can be on one channel only.

Step 4. Before getting the drive out of the packet check there is a spare power lead, a large white plug with quite thick wires coming from it (if there is go to ||). If there isn't buy a splitter> remove a power cable from the hard drive plug the splitter on the end of this plug and no connect on of the two splitter plug to the origional hard drive. || Now get the new drive out and read through its instructions, check that it is set as 'slave', jumpers will have to be removed/moved to set it.

Step 5. Now that there is a power cable, slide the new drive in a slot either above or below the origional hard drive, and below the floppy drive. Once in use the screws to hold it in place. Now connect the IDE cable and spare power cable to the drive. Next chec all cables, not only the new drive but every cable plug and socket in the case.

Step 6. Now boot up the PC (turn it on!). If using Windows, then you have to set a floppy disk as a 'Start Up Disc'. By going to: Start Menu>Settings>Control Panel>Add/Remove programs>(tab at top) Start Up Disc. Now create a Start up disc on a blank floppy disc.

Step 7. Restart with the Start up disc in floppy drive. Wait until it loads, with a black screen. When disc activities stop, it will ask whether you want CD-Rom support. Start with CD-Rom support off. When disc activities stop, type in ‘fdsk’. When the screen loads, select Create Primary Dos Partition. Then Follow on screen instructions to create a Primary Dos partition, when it asks if you want to use the largest possible amount for partition select Yes (Y) [shown as loads of writing with question at end]. Once it finishes exit fdsk, restart with CTRL+ALT+Delete. Now with the floppy disc in, select start without CD-Rom support again. Now type in ‘format D:’ (you may wish to disconnect the other origional drive in case it formats the wrong one!)

Now restart and remove the floppy disc. Hopefully you should have slightly less space than quoted with the drive as Dos takes some of it away; e.g. 20.5 down to 19.5gb.

Now you should be able to use it as a normal drive.

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