Very easy question, regarding installing a second hard drive

[INFERNO2K]

Hello, I have a spare 20 gig harddrive that I would like to install in a machine of mine upstairs. It already has a 30 gig harddrive installed in it, how would I go about connecting a second harddrive inside?

Sorry if this is really easy, im more of a software guy than hardware

What if I dont have a spare power connector? Where does the IDE ribbon go, if theres only one primary IDE slot on the motherboard and the secondary is used for a dvdrom?

[BillLeeLee]

Most likely, the IDE cable from your first hard drive will have a second connector on it for a slave drive. Just set the jumper on the second drive to Slave, and you might have to set a jumper on the main drive to "Master" or "Master with Slave."

You can also put the drive on the secondary IDE channel, you could make it a slave to the CD drive if you really wanted.

If you're out of power supply connectors, you could always get a Y-splitter cable.

[AndyVX]

Heh, I could have sworn that I just read the same thread at Ars Technica... that, or I'm starting to go crazy. :)

[Ice Czar]

BillLeeLee pretty much covered it


then access the BIOS to make sure it properly recognized

from W2K\XP
Start > Run > (type) diskmgmt.msc > disk should be shown (disk 2) if not > Action Button > Rescan disks > RClick unallocated space > Partition and Format