I want to add a 2nd Hard drive to my Workstation 2

[JeffGatti]

Hi Folks

I currently have a 30 gb hd that is running out of space so I went out and bought a 80 gig Maxtor 7200 RPM Ultra ATA that I would like to install as a second drive.

I haven't even opened the box yet so I thought I should ask some questions. I'm running XP pro on a AMD 1.5Ghz with a bout 256 ram.

1. I'm running FAT32 on my current drive

2. Do I need to buy another XP Pro License for the additional drive?

3. Will XP pro see the Hard drive when I install it?

4. Do I need a daisy chained ribbon cable?

5. Help me before I really screw something up.

I really appreciate any assistance from someone that has done it before because I havent

Regards,

Jeff

 

[rclarke250]

If the new drive is a retail drive.(bought at best buy,circuit city.) It will have a ribbon cable in the box,and mounting screws. No, xp liscense is for the computer,or individual if purchased without the pc. set jumper on the old drive as master,and jumper on the new drive as slave, should be a picture of the jumpers on each drive. It would be better to convert your drive to ntfs, it's a more efficient file system. this can be done by right clicking on my computer,and choosing manage, click on disk management under storage, in the right window right click on drive and choose to convert to ntfs,you will not loose any data,but better safe then sorry,make a backup of your important data. XP will see the new drive after hooking it up and jumpered correctly,then just turn it on,you can manage this drive,(partition,and format) from the same disk management spoken of earlier. hope this helps. Rich

 

[JeffGatti]

Hey thanks a bunch for that information. I pulled the workstation apart and the packaging from the hard drive

You were absolutely right, there was a cable inside and I read the documentation and it was pretty clear about the jumper configuration and which plug to use for the slave.

What I noticed was that the blue position on my mother board was already taken by my existing harddrive plus their was no additional wiring for the power supply or anything else.

Do they make a nesting ribbion cable to stack both those hard drives into the blue position on the motherboard? Or do I need to get a new mother board?

Regards

Jeff

 

[jsauce]

I'm assuming here that when you refer to blue, you mean the primary controller. Sometimes, but not always, The Primary Controller connection will be colored blue while the Secondary will be marked black. When you hook up a hard disk to the controller you connect it using a 40pin or 80pin ribbon cable. The 40pin cable is an older cable used for dma66 and lower drives like older hard drives and cdrom drives. Newer drives use the 80pin ribbon cable. Now each controller can handle up to 2 devices. A Master and a slave can be connected to each controller making up the two devices on the controller. You said there was no additional wiring for your power supply. Each power supply should have multiple 12 volt 4 pin connectors. Those are the plugs that look like they fit directly in the back of the hard drive itself. On the hard drive you can see there are 4 pins sticking out in the back where this plug will fit. Next to that are 8 smaller pins which you conenct a jumper to to declare the master, slave or cable select. And then finally the connector for the ribbon. You power supply should have 4 or 5 of these 12 volt connectors for the hard drive. If you cant find an open one you might need to consider whethere your machine already has used all of them. If it has you may already have the maximum number of eide devices in which case you need to install an additional eide card to get another device working. You will also either need to replace the power supply with one with more connectors or, you will need to buy Y connectors to add additional devices.


John D. Saucier
jsauce@magicguild.com
Certified Technician
Network Administrator