The Drive Way - Hard Drives

(Page 7 of 10 )

Installing the hard drive is similar to the floppy drive, mainly because they usually share the same compartment. Although hard drives are the same size as floppy drives (4 inches wide), they do use very different connectors. While the floppy accepts a unique AMP 4-pin power connector, the hard drive (and CD/DVD-ROM) uses a standard 4-pin Molex connector.

Follow these steps to install the hard drive:

1. The first hard drive slides inside the bay just below the floppy disk drive.
   
   

2. Secure the hard drive with two screws on this side of the chassis. Make sure you’ve configured the jumper setting on the hard drive as master— otherwise, you’ll be taking this out again, if incorrect, to change it. Again, we’ll take care of securing the opposite side when we’re done with the installation.
   
   
3. Attach an 80-wire, 40-pin connector to the rear of the hard drive, aligning the red stripe side of the cable with pin 1.
   
   
   Most power supplies have a single power cable that has a large four-pin Molex power connector linked to the smaller 4-pin AMP connector for the floppy disk drive. This is usually the best choice for the first hard drive, which is just below the floppy disk drive.
   
   
4. The 80-wire, 40-pin connector for modern hard drives includes a notch and a missing pinhole, in addition to the red stripe, to assist in proper installation. Again, as with the floppy drive, align the red stripe side with pin 1.
   

   

5. Insert the hard drive connector into the primary IDE socket on the motherboard.
   
   
6. Slide the second hard drive into the carriage slot just below the master hard drive. The jumper setting for this one should be configured as the slave.
   
   
7. Secure the hard drive into place with two screws.
    
   
8. Insert the secondary slave connector from the hard drive cable into the rear socket of the hard drive.
   

   

9. Plug in another power cable, and you have two hard drives installed and ready for partitioning, formatting, and installation.
   
   

This chapter is from Build Your Own Server, by Tony Caputo (McGraw-Hill/Osborne, 2004, ISBN: 0072227281). Check it out at your favorite bookstore today. Buy this book now.

Next: Installing a CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, or CD-RW Drive >>
 

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