Golgo 13 Posted February 3, 2009 Report Posted February 3, 2009 I haven't done it before, but am sure I can do it without ruining my PC. I could go to a tech site for this, but I've read enough about the actual process, and this is for the questions they sometimes don't answer and would have to go somewhere else for. I'm in desperate need of space and thought of an external drive, but since I hear they're not well suited to anything more than back-up, sometimes fickle and not as fast, I figured an internal drive is the solution. And I'd need another eventually. First, it's a basic Dell of a few years. Yes, I need to upgrade to something else, but that's for the future. First, I can just throw this thing into the spare drive bay, right? Like I would a second CD/DVD drive, since there's nowhere for a new HD to sit by the old one. There's also no spare IDE connector on the motherboard, but one of the ribbons does split off, presumably for an instance like this, but I want to make sure. I also find there aren't a whole lot of options for ATA-100 drives these days, as SATA is more numerous, but the motherboard only has these out-of-favor connectors. I've seen some SATA to ATA-100 adapters, but want to know if they're a viable option in order to get one of these newer drives to work in my current PC... at least until I upgrade. If not I'll just go with an ATA since I don't know when I would get around to it.
Jaxxson Mayhem Posted February 3, 2009 Report Posted February 3, 2009 Adding hard drives is easy. I've added 3 separate internal ones. There are spaces that you just slide them into, screw in the screws, connect the cables and install the software that came with the drive and you're set. I've only installed ones that use SATA though.
Golgo 13 Posted February 5, 2009 Author Report Posted February 5, 2009 Most of that is the stuff I get. It's the little things that are bugging me. I'll likely go ATA-100 to be on the safe side. I figure it'll be easier to make an ATA work later if I choose to rather than force SATA with what I have.
Dr. Tyler; Captain America Posted February 5, 2009 Report Posted February 5, 2009 if your motherboard can accept SATA, use it. if you don't have a SATA slot on your motherboard, you're basically forced to use an IDE hard drive. there's not really a whole lot of options here.
ZGangsta Posted February 5, 2009 Report Posted February 5, 2009 Adding hard drives is easy. I've added 3 separate internal ones. There are spaces that you just slide them into, screw in the screws, connect the cables and install the software that came with the drive and you're set. Wait what? I've installed plenty of drives in computers and built many computers from scratch and I've never come across a situation where you install software to get it to recognize a hard drive. Hell, I've never seen a drive come with any install disk or CD or anything.
Jaxxson Mayhem Posted February 5, 2009 Report Posted February 5, 2009 Both hard drives I installed came with installation CD's. I think one was from Western Digital and the other one was from a different company I think.
Dr. Tyler; Captain America Posted February 6, 2009 Report Posted February 6, 2009 hard drives don't need drivers. you wouldn't be able to load an operating system on them if you did.
Golgo 13 Posted February 6, 2009 Author Report Posted February 6, 2009 That's what I was saying. It can't use SATA and I'm not too keen on an extra $20-30 for a temporary SATA-to-IDE adapter that may not even work.
Dr. Tyler; Captain America Posted February 6, 2009 Report Posted February 6, 2009 SATA to IDE isn't worth it; it defeats the purpose of SATA, which is to aid cable management and vastly increase speed. With an adapter, you're still speed limited and it doesn't actually make cable management easy at all. Get some shit like this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16822136111
ZGangsta Posted February 6, 2009 Report Posted February 6, 2009 SATA to IDE isn't worth it; it defeats the purpose of SATA, which is to aid cable management and vastly increase speed. With an adapter, you're still speed limited and it doesn't actually make cable management easy at all. SATA also is great in that you can hot-swap an internal hard drive if you want. Though I've never had cause to do that.
Dr. Tyler; Captain America Posted February 7, 2009 Report Posted February 7, 2009 haha, exactly. nice to have, but completely worthless to most people.
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