Learn How to Install a Hard Drive, I Did!
Feb 20 '01
The Bottom Line Just follow these few steps and your hard drive will be up and running!
Approximately 1 month ago I purchased a 20.5 Gig hard drive. I purchased this Quantum hard drive for $160. I bought this from DirtCheapDrives.com. They had a really easy ordering form and this was simple. I was also very happy with the price. My Quantum lct10, 20.5 Gig., 5400 RPM's hard drive, came with some small instructions.
The instructions are a very important part for installing you hard drive. Every hard drive has it's own configuration and no two kinds are alike. So when I received my hard drive 3 days later, it came with 2 pages from Dirt Cheap Drives themselves, thanking me for buying it from then and wishing me good luck with it. They also tell me what should be included in the box and then they go into the installation instructions. This was good until it got really confusing and they started using really big computer terms. For example one of them was "Logical Block Addressing." I know a fair amount about computers but I have never heard this before.
Once I read through my packet I went on to the other 2 page packet it came with. This showed me how to hook up the connectors in the back. It told me how you have to make one hard drive a slave and one a master (if you are having two, which I did). If you do not have two drives then you have to set it to master or cable select. To set your hard drive to it's setting you have to take the little white "pin" and switch it from it's setting to the desired one.
The first 2 "pins" going vertical are the default setting which is "Master."
The second 2 "pins" going vertical are the "Cable Select" setting. I am not sure what this setting means but this is what my first hard drive was set to. I had to change it from this to "Master" setting.
The third 2 "pins" going vertical are the "Slave" or "Park" setting. This is what you most likely want to set it to if you already have a hard drive in use. The "Park" position is for if you do not want to use the hard drive for some reason.
The fourth 2 "pins" going vertical are not used. These are there just to spread things out. Make sure you do not put the pin there because you might "fry" your hard drive.
Once you get the Jumper pin in you have the 40 pin cable with connector for a new drive. This is how your hard drive will work with everything else. Make sure you plug this in all the way. Otherwise you can "fry" your hard drive or you can just mess it up. After you get this plugged in your going to have to plug it into a power source. I only had one power cord left since I used one for my CD-RW. There should be others lying around in your computer and you can tell if it will fit or not.
Once you get all this set up, turn on your computer. But, make sure you have everything plugged in tightly. Your computer should recognize your new hardware. I had the problem where my hard drive did not recognize it. I went to the CMOS BIOS but could not find anything to set parameters for my hard drive. I even went to the diagnostics and learned that my hard drive was up and running just not detectable on my computer. Since I was lost here, I called up Compaq, because I have a Compaq. They were useless and said they could not help me even though my computer came with the same hard drive. They told me to call up the manufacturer of the hard drive. Before I called Quantum, I decided to go to their web site. Just to let you know, this was at least 2 weeks after I originally got the hard drive. I could not find any time what so ever. So there at the web site, I figured out I needed to download some software to detect the hard drive and to make it accessible. This mad me extremely mad since there was none included with the hard drive nor was there a note saying I needed to get this. The software just formatted my hard drive and put parameters.
After that whole ordeal I don't know if I can ever get a new hard drive. Well I will just because I know how but, you know what I mean. So after all that was done and I went back to use my hard drive I noticed that there was only 19.1 Gigs on it. This mad me mad because I paid for 20.5 Gigs and only got that. I know that is because it needs space to operate but 1.4 Gigs?
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mix-master
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