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Installing 2nd hard drive

I have a Western Digital IDE (WD600) hard drive from an old emachines pc that toasted itself. I just bought a new Dell and would like to install the western digital hard drive as a second hard drive in the dell. They are both XP machines if that makes a difference.

Am I correct in thinking that I just need to screw it in place, connect the IDE cable and the power cable, switch the jumper to slave and turn the machine on?

If I have missed any steps or you need any more information please let me know.

Thanks,

Matt

PUNKY

What is dell pc model? There are extra brackets inside (green ones), you could use them to install old drive into the bay.

However, try to avoid connect the IDE drive on same cable with DVD/CD devices.

torquedtech

there are 2 more possible steps

1 go into bios on bootup and make sure that it recognizes the second hdd
2 after booting into windows xp right click on my computer and select manage, then go to disk management and make sure the disk (probably disk 1) is enabled

then you should be golden
good luck
~Dan

matty1stop

ASKER

It is a Vostro 200, Mini Tower Intel Celeron CPU 430 (1.80GHz,800FSB)

PUNKY

Please see the links for how to:

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/vos200/en/mini_tower/om_en/html/parts.htm#wp1565324

Your system has only 1 IDE connector, so you have to attach drive same cable with DVD/CD. As you know, configure slave / master correctly and your system should work ok.

matty1stop

ASKER

What is the danger of installing the IDE drive on the same cable as the CD/DVD?

SOLUTION

torquedtech

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PUNKY

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matty1stop

ASKER

As you can tell this is a very basic machine for my father who is in his seventies and just learning to use a computer. So I don't think performance sill be an issue at all. I will probably just install the drive and see how it works. I always tell him that his computer could be replaced with a 50 cent deck of cards.

Thanks for all the help.