installing 2nd hard drive, what do i need?
 

k so i bought a drive off ebay, 250gb caviar blue and i was an idiot and didnt open up my case before hand to see what the computer im using takes..

so the master right now is setup with this orange cable, it's not the ribbon style cable? :

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y13...r/DSC04641.jpg

the HD i bought though takes the ribbon style im asuming? or if it can take this orange cable there is not another one to plug into? the second orange one runs up into my CD drive:

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y13...r/DSC04644.jpg

at the bottom of my MB, the IDE connector is still available though, could i just buy the ribbon cable and plug the second HD in with this?

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y13...r/DSC04642.jpg

all you need is an ide cable and a molex cable from your psu. and nope, you cant use sata cable(orange cable)

Yup should work no problem. Like VooDood said, just purchase a IDE cable or find one. Comp shops go through those like nothing... Also make sure you have a power source aswell.

Yep...just need an IDE cable. You probably got one with your motherboard if you can dig up your old stuff.

One other thing...if the system doesn't auto detect it - you may need to set up the boot order in the BIOS to use the SATA after you install the IDE drive.

cool thank you guys very much, i figured it was that

I'm curious as to why you purchased IDE vs. SATA.

I wouldnt mind knowing either lol

this is an older comp, secondary now but when i ordered it from NCIX a while back i guess i just chose it when i was building the parts and didnt notice until now lol, if it had the ribbon cable i would have understood completely

If you have any geeky friends, they probably have oodles of IDE cables they dont need instead of going to ncix.

ive probably got a few kicking around myself actually

are all IDE cables the same or are these ribbon cables specifically for HD's?

like will the ribbon ones for hard disk drives work?

IDE cables are generally the same. They are either 40 or 80 conductor cables (same connector, except that the 80 conductors are rated for ATA66 while the 40 are for ATA33)

As long as it says it's an IDE cable that fits in the IDE slot then you're good to go. Floppy disk cables are slightly narrower.

only the ribbons for a floppy drive are different....
Hard drives and optical drives use the same ribbon

as even further proof my desktop has both of my DVD drives and the HDD all strung along the same ribbon

Are you sure it's IDE? Each IDE channel can only support 2 devices.

are you sure? I have what I believe is an IDE cable with like 12 plugs on it, I was going to make a belt. I'm not 100% sure if they're all on the same one but I know the original DVD drive and HDD are on the same one.

Yes... Maybe you're using some kind of SCSI setup that supports more than 2 devices on it's chain.

no clue, I just plugged the drive in when I bought it :lol

hey so i had an extra IDE cable lieing around and i tossed it in, windows 7 found it right away and installed it etc.

but whats suppose to be a "Caviar blue 250gb" HD is only showing 134gb?

it had some files on it as i bought it used and in the description it said it was "pulled out of a computer" so i just right clicked on it and formatted using NTFS format or w.e, same thing though missing about 100gigs

what can i do to see if i can find those missing gigs?

Well the Hardy Boys are your best bet, but if they're busy then try Nancy Drew, and as a last resort you can call Scooby Doo and his team, they usually do ghosts and shit but Thelma's pretty good with clues.

looks to me that you got f'd up the ass pretty good. it seems like you got a 160gb drive instead of the advertised 250gb. =/ ebay ftl.

edit: thinkings its this one from ncix http://ncix.com/products/index.php?s...20Digital%20WD

check your bios and see if it say WD1600AAJB for the caviar blue hard drive, if it does you got a 160gb.

hmm it says WD2500AAJB

yet it only says 134 available on a completely formatted HD..

do you have to format in BIOS or windows setup or somthing?

kinda weird it's missing so much..

Which OS are you running? For WinXP, you need at least SP1 to see more than 137GB.

Download and run the Data Lifeguard tools from WD site. That will get you past the limitation.