How to Change, Upgade or Remove an IDE Hard Drive

Hard drives - Hard drives are a little more complicated. First off, you have to know what you want to do with the hard drive. By this, I mean either you want it set to either SLAVE or MASTER. If you want to boot from the hard drive (load windows or whatever other OS off it) then you want it to be your master. If you already have a master, and you want to use this as extra space, set this hdd to slave. This setting change requires a jumper on the back of the hard drive to be moved. It may sound hard, but it's easy. These jumper configurations can be found on the back of the hdd; most have a small label which states which way is which. After setting the jumper, take the IDE cable that runs to your primary hard drive. This is the long, usually grey cable that runs from a slot on your motherboard to your primary hard drive. If you are putting your new hdd in as a slave, this cable should have a second connector on it not being used. Connect this to the new slave hard drive, but don't disconnect the cable from your other HDD.

If you're putting a new drive in as master, then you need to take the cable running right to your old HDD, detach it, and connect it to the new master HDD. In both cases, you will need to connect a power cable to the HDD. This runs from your power supply, and you should have a few extra not being used. Connect one connector to the 4 pronged connector on the hard drive.

Once the hard drive is all connected, make sure it is fastened to the chasis on both sides of the case. This can be done by removing the case, then bolting the hard drive on one side and then the other. This is important - if you only bolt one side of the HDD, it can lead to corruption of files on the HDD.

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