Hard Drive Installation Overview

People often say that adding a new hard drive into a system is a very quick and easy task; I say that it can be, if you have a bit of knowledge before hand! With this guide I'll start by explaining how to actually set the hard drive up, physically installing it , and then configuring the drive so that the operating system can see and use the drive.

When you purchase a new hard disk drive, you will receive it in some kind of packag ng. Many drives are shipped in a kind of plastic clamshell such as this drive on the right, while others may be sealed in an antistatic bag. They are shipped like this for a reason, these are very sensitive devices, so be very careful when handling them, and don't give them unnecessary bangs and bumps!

Once you have carefully removed the hard drive from its packaging you can take a look and see where the jumpers, interface and power connectors are located, and also read the information on the top of the drive as it will tell you how large the drive is, what model it is and how to set up the hard drive to be recognised as a Master or Slave device.

What do Master and Slave refer to?

In the average PC there are two IDE channels; that is two ports to plug hard disk drives , CDR OM drives, DVD Burners etc. into . However, by using a cable with three connectors, one to the mother board, the other two to IDE devices, you can install two devices per channel. T his means on the majority of PCs you can install up to 4 IDE devices. However, this isn't a s easy as just plugging extra device s into spare connectors; you must first tell the device whether it is going to be a Master or a Slave .

All hard disk drives will have a key that is visible somewhere on the drive, and this corresponds to jumpers on the back of the drive, next to the interface and power connectors. On the Maxtor that I'll be using for this guide, it is located on the top just below the Maxtor logo. This drive can be set up as Master (J50), Slave (No jumper) or Cable Select (J48).

Cable Select allows the motherboard a nd hard d r ive to decide whether the drive is acting as Master or Slave, depending on what connector (on the IDE cable) the drive is plugged into . This doesn ' t always work, so it is useful to know how to set Master and Slave manually .

Once this has been done, you can think about the physical installation of the hard drive into your PC . This should be pretty self explanatory , although there are many different styles of computer case on the market. All you need to look for are the right size of drive cage (the bit of case that actually holds the hard disk drive) and the right size of screws, and mak e sure you screw in the drive from both sides (if possible ) and that the connectors are facing into the case, to allow connection to the power supply and motherboard.

Then it's just a case of plugging everything together ! You'll need to find a spare power connector (the connectors with a red, two black and a yellow wire) and a connector on an IDE ribbon cable. Many computers today have two optical drives and a hard drive already installed, so for this example we'll need to plug the new hard drive in with the existing hard drive, as a slave. Find the IDE cable that is already going to the existing hard drive, and have a look at it, if it has an extra connector about a third of the way along it , then use that to plug in th e new hard drive , if not, then you'll probably need to change the cable to one that has three connectors in total instead of two. Connecting both the power and IDE cables should be relatively easy, don 't force them; they are keyed so that they cannot be installed the wrong way round.