Installing IDE Hard Drives Is your hard drive getting full because of all those MP3's you downloaded and all those programs you installed? Do you need more hard disk space to store all your photos of your grandkids/Pamela Anderson/Ricky Martin? Is your hard drive old, slow and small and you want to swap it for a better one? Did your hard drive just fail and needs to be replaced? Either way, you're looking at buying and installing a new hard drive. You could take your PC to a shop and have them do it for you. But where's the fun in that? You pay a lot more than necessary and you don't learn anything having somebody else do it for you. Buy a new hard drive and get ready to go to work under the hood! Who, Me? Installing an IDE hard drive isn't as difficult as you might think. If you are relatively new to installing hardware, it is our hope here at PC911 that as you read tutorials and become more informed, you will overcome your fear of working under the hood. If you can master this, you can save considerable money by buying parts at discount prices and installing them yourself. Plus, you will learn more about your PC, what it looks like inside and realize that it doesn't take a rocket scientist, not even a bachelors in computer science, to work on it. Remember, the motto is: If it ain't broke, take off the cover and make it better! A Quick Word of Caution Care and Caution are required prerequisites though, so that components aren't damaged and also to avoid electric shock. Before handling any electronic components it is a good idea to touch something metal that is grounded to discharge any static electricity you might have stored in your body. What I always do is touch one of the metal screws on the light switch face plate on the wall. Try not to work on a carpeted floor if you can help it (I have no choice, so I have to be careful). Don't shuffle your feet when you walk on carpet. Getting Started Carefully unpack the new hard drive from the box it came in. Does it have any documentation? Unless it's a retail package it probably won't have a booklet or leaflet. All the documentation you need should be affixed to the label on the drive. What you need to know is, what jumper positions does it use? Does it require a jumper on the Master position when it's the only hard drive? How many Cylinders, Heads or Tracks it has, does it give you a drive type number (e.g. Type 47)? In the case of an older hard drive and an older computer these parameters are important as you may need to enter them in the computer's CMOS setup. If you are unsure of a drive's jumper positions, settings and specifications, it is a good idea to visit the Web site of the hard drive manufacturer. In most cases you can view the settings and parameters for your model, or perhaps download an Adobe Acrobat .pdf file. And yes, even if you're male, you need this information. The attitude "I don't need no stinkin' manual" will not work here. Now, to work on your computer, shut down the computer and turn off the switch on your surge protector. I recommend that you leave the computer plugged in though, so that it will be grounded (even with the switch off, the ground from the three-prong plug is still connected). If you do end up working on it with the power on (but the computer off!!) be very careful not to touch the power supply or any components on the board that you don't need to touch. Also, beware of capacitors, even when the computer is off they still store a charge and can give you a new hair style if you touch them, or damage something if you somehow divert the charge to a chip. With the computer off but plugged in for the ground, you can touch the metal frame of the computer at any time to discharge static elextricity from your body. You can also do it with the computer unplugged completely, but in that case be very careful to discharge any static electricity from your body prior to each time you touch something, or wear a grounded wrist strap. You can purchase those at PC or hobby shops. Now, take the cover off your PC and examine the way your current hard drive is connected. Note the power connector and the IDE ribbon cable, but don't disconnect anything just yet until you decide how you are going to proceed. For the next part of the tutorial, we will cover replacing a single hard drive with a new one. After that we will get in to other configurations. Removing the Old Hard Drive Before you disconnect anything, take a good look at the way the IDE ribbon cable is connected. Note the red stripe on one side of the IDE ribbon cable, that indicates it is connected to Pin 1 on the motherboard on one end and to Pin 1 on the hard drive on the other end. Remember which connector on the IDE ribbon is connected. Disconnect the IDE ribbon and the power connector and move them aside such that you won't forget how it was connected. Remove the screws holding the drive in the mounting bay being careful not to drop them into the guts of the machine. The best way to do this is to use one hand to operate the screwdriver, one hand to hold the screw so it won't drop, and one hand to prevent the hard drive from falling when you remove the last screws. Set the screws somewhere so they don't get knocked away sending you groping for them on the floor. Remove the old hard drive. Installing the New Hard Drive First, you must determine the jumper configuration of the new hard drive. Depending on the make and model, to use the drive as a single drive, it might require NO JUMPERS or may require it to be jumpered as Master. Consult the documentation, the manufacturer's Web site or the label on the drive for this information. In most cases the drive will not work properly if incorrectly jumpered. Symptoms range from the drive not being recognized at all to intermittent drive controller failure messages during POST. There are usually three jumper positions, Master, Slave and Cable Select. Some computers determine master/slave relationships based on how the drive is connected to the IDE ribbon cable, but do not use this setting unless specifically instructed to do so. Consult your computer's documentation. There can also be a jumper position for "Master with Slave" (no, you can leave your whip in the closet) or even a spare position to store a jumper for later use. All I can say is consult any documentation or the label on the drive for the proper jumper setting. It is imperative for proper operation of the drive to set the jumpers correctly. Sometimes you have to turn the drive upside down and look at the printed circuit board for jumper position labels. For example it may say M, S and CS (Master, Slave and Cable Select) What does Master and Slave mean? On a normal motherboard there are two IDE controllers, usually called IDE 1 and IDE 2, or Primary and Secondary IDE controller. Each controller can handle up to two IDE devices, e.g. two hard drives, a hard drive and a CD- ROM, etc. meaning you can connect up to 4 IDE devices. Even though each controller can handle two devices, it can only transfer data for one device at a time alternating between the two devices. Therefore it is best if you only have two IDE devices in your system (one hard drive, one CD-ROM) to put each one on a separate controller. To distinguish the two devices on each controller, you designate one as the Master device, and the other as the Slave device. This is done by setting jumpers (called "jumpering") in a certain fashion determined by the drive manufacturer and documented usually on a sticker on the drive itself. Therefore: The first device on the first IDE controller is called Primary Master. The second device on the first IDE controller is called Primary Slave. The first device on the second IDE controller is called Secondary Master. The second device on the second IDE controller is called Secondary Slave. Normally, the computer always boots from the primary Master device, unless you have a special SCSI setup or chose to boot from floppy or CD. That's why it is very important that all devices are given their correct identity by jumpering them correctly. OK, now that the drive is jumpered correctly, mount the new hard drive in the bay, the same way as the old one. Tighten the screws evenly, but do not over tighten such that the threads get stripped, ok Arnold? Hopefully your new hard drive is the same size and shape (these are things you must consider before purchasing a new hard drive). That spec is referred to as "Form Factor". For example, most modern hard drives are 3.5 inch form factor with low profile (thickness). Data Ribbon Cables Connect the IDE ribbon cable to the new hard drive. The red stripe on the cable must connect to pin 1 on the drive. Look for some kind of marking at the connector on the drive, usually a small number 1, and match it up with the red stripe on the IDE cable. If you can't find such a marking, a general rule of thumb (but don't bank on it!) for hard disks and CDROM devices is that the red striped side of the ribbon goes on the side closest to the power connector. As an aside, most floppy drives follow the opposite of this rule. IDE hard drives nowadays, have a missing pin and therefore the IDE ribbon cable connector can only go on one way, because the corresponding hole is filled over with plastic. It is important that you Do Not Force the connector, but line the pins up and press gently but firmly (and straight! do not wiggle it or apply pressure at an angle) with gradually increasing pressure. Then connect the power connector to the new hard drive. It is recommended practice to connect the cable such that the master device is at the end of the cable, with the slave device on the inner connector. That means you must mount your drives accordingly, so that the cable will reach far enough to connect it in this manner. However, with normal 40 wire IDE ribbon cables (ATA33 or normal PIO) this is not critical. In most cases, you can hook up the cable the way it best fits, according to where the master and slave devices are mounted in the bays. If you're too lazy, or unable to change how the drives are mounted it is far better to connect the cable in this manner than to severely twist or kink to make the connections. It is also of significance to note, that IDE ribbon cables should be a maximum of 18 inches in length (according to specifications), to minimize attenuation (weakening) of the signal. However, 24 inch ribbon cables are available and should not pose a problem if you need that extra reach. This does not apply to ATA66 or ATA100 interfaces that use the more sophisticated 80 wire ribbon cables. The connectors on the ribbon cable are color coded, and we must pay careful attention to where they are connected. The blue connector must connect to the interface connector on the motherboard, or ATA66/100 controller card. The black connector must connect to the master device. The grey connector must connect to the slave device (if present) The devices are jumpered in the same manner, in a Master/Slave relationship or Cable Select can be used if supported (but not a mix of the two on the same cable). It is important to consult the documentation as always, because some drives (e.g. Western Digital) have a separate setting for Standalone Master and Master with Slave. With the ATA66/100 cables, it is more important to pay attention to cable length. Cables longer than 18 inches are not recommended. For ATA66 you may get away with 24 inch cables, but it's more critical for ATA100. Now that we have the hardware installed, the next step is to get the BIOS to recognize the drive with the correct parameters. Entering BIOS Setup Before you switch your computer on again, you need to know how to enter the BIOS setup. This is usually done by pressing a particular key or a combination of keys when your computer first powers up and displays the BIOS screen. In most cases a message is displayed "Press so-and-so key to enter setup" or something similar. Some computers require you to hold a specific key while powering up the computer, or may even require that you boot the computer with a special setup disk (older computers). Consult your computer's documentation. Some computers even automatically recognize hard drives by type and you don't even have a say in the matter. Here's a list of typical BIOS setup keys: (Thanks to Bobo for providing me with this comprehensive list) BIOS Maker Key(s) AMI F1, Del, Ctrl-S AST Ctrl-Alt-Esc Award F1, F2, Del, Ctrl-Alt-Enter Compaq F10 Phoenix F2, Ctrl-Alt-Esc, Ctrl-Alt-R, Ctrl-Alt-Ins, Ctrl-Alt-Q, Ctrl-Alt- F1, Ctrl-Alt-+, Ctrl-Alt-- IBM PS1 Ctrl-Alt-I What is the BIOS? BIOS stands for Basic Input Output System. It is a small program that is stored permanently on a chip on your motherboard. This program is the first thing that runs every time you turn your PC on. It performs a check on all the essential hardware connected to your system, such as the memory and CPU, and detects if there are any devices connected to the IDE controllers such as - you guessed it - your hard drive, and tries to identify them. By entering the BIOS you get the option to modify certain values. In this case, you can tell the BIOS to autodetect the drive and recognize automatically what type of drive it is and how big it is. But you can also type that information in manually if the BIOS cannot detect it correctly. Entering the Parameters Insert a DOS bootdisk from your version of Windows. A Windows 95 or 98 Startup Disk is good for this. You do have one, right? Turn your computer on and enter the BIOS by pressing the appropriate key at the appropriate time. Now, most BIOS setup utilities will have a main menu. What we are interested in here is "Standard CMOS Setup" or perhaps "Autodetect IDE Hard Drives" or "Fixed Disks" perhaps. It depends on your computer's BIOS. Go to the area where hard disks are defined, and under Primary master, select "Auto" or enter a drive type or parameters from the label on the drive or the documentation. Depending on the age of your computer, it may not have an Auto setting and may not have a drive type number that corresponds to your type of drive. In that case, choose User Defined and enter the correct parameters. But I recommend trying Auto first as it most likely will work with any halfway new PC and make this part of the job very easy. Here is where this gets tricky, if you have an older BIOS (e.g. a 486 computer) and just bought a brand new large hard drive, your BIOS may not be able to accommodate that drive. That does not mean you cannot use it, but it does mean that you won't be able to utilize the full capacity. Alternatively, most manufacturers of large hard drives have a utility that you can use to set up the hard drive and it will install a driver overlay to get around the BIOS limitation. An example of this is EZDrive with EZBios from Western Digital. Consult the Hard Disk vendor's web site to find such a utility. If you have autodetect and it correctly identifies your hard drive and reports the correct type and mode (e.g. UDMA mode 2 or PIO 4) you're all set. If not, go through the predefined types and choose one that best matches your drive. If you must enter parameters yourself, choose User Defined and enter the Cylinders, Heads and Sectors and choose LBA mode (Logical Block Addressing). If you do not have LBA mode, you will only be able to use 528 Mb of your hard drive and you must seek a drive setup utility with a driver overlay. Pentium computers and newer usually have LBA mode but still may not correctly support the size of hard drive you have. Again, seek a solution from the vendor's Web site. Alternatively, consult the manufacturer of your computer or motherboard to see if a bios upgrade is available. If your computer does not offer an exact match for the drive type number, and doesn't have a User Defined setting for you to enter parameters, you can improvise by choosing the correct number of heads but selecting a smaller number of cylinders than the drive actually has. Choose the number of cylinders closest to the number that your drive has, but do not go over. Using fewer cylinders will result in reduced disk capacity though, as the rest will be unused. Once you have the correct parameters entered, or auto selected or used the function to Autodetect and the drive type is correctly identified, save the CMOS settings and exit. Your computer will restart and because you have a DOS boot disk in the drive the computer will boot from it. If you cannot boot from a boot disk, then go back into your CMOS setup and set the boot sequence such that Floppy or Drive A is first. You are now ready to prepare the hard drive for use. In other words, you must partition and format it. If you need instructions on how to do that, please refer to our tutorial on How To Clean Install Windows. It includes instructions how to partition and format. Once you're sure that everything is going to be OK, shut the computer off and replace the cover. The rest of what you have to do is with software. That pretty much covers how to replace an IDE hard drive, but what if your present hard drive is still good and you want to use it? The next part of the tutorial covers how to set up the new drive in a Master/Slave relationship. New Hard Drive as Master and Old as Slave If you wish a clean start, but still want to keep your old hard drive to copy over data files afterwards and then eventually format it, you can hook up the new hard drive as Master and the old as Slave. This will require an extra drive bay and the appropriate cable connector on the IDE ribbon and an extra drive power connector. Take out the old hard drive (so you can see properly to change the jumpers and read the parameters) and install the new jumpered as Master (note that you may have to change the jumper on your old hard drive to reflect master with Slave). Install the old jumpered as Slave, and connect it to the second connector on the IDE ribbon cable. If you only have one on the cable, perhaps your old computer doesn't support that or maybe you just need to purchase another cable. Go to the BIOS setup and detect the Master or enter parameters and do the same with the Slave (old hard drive). Save BIOS settings and exit and the machine will boot with the boot disk in the drive. Partition and format your Master, but don't touch the Slave. Install Windows on the Master and you'll have a beautiful clean install on a nice, fast, new hard drive. Install your applications. Copy over any data you want to keep from the old hard drive and then format it and be done with it. You now have your old hard drive to make use of for backups or data files/games or even applications. Note that most modern computers have Dual IDE controllers, which means that you can have secondary Master and secondary Slave in addition to primary, but the secondary Master is best left for your CD-ROM drive so that it can be accessed simultaneously with the hard drive. Now, if you would rather be able to access both hard drives simultaneously, then configure your second hard drive as secondary Master. Old Hard Drive as Master and New as Slave What if you do not wish to reinstall your operating system and reinstall all of your applications? Well then you can install the new hard drive as Slave and just use it for data files or install any new applications or games there. Alternatively, you can jumper the new hard drive as Slave initially and copy over the entire contents of the old drive to the new drive making an image of it, then change the jumpers and make your new hard drive bootable. You can then format the old drive and use it as Slave. There are a few ways to do this. The easiest way to do this if you have a drive cloning utility like Norton Ghost or Powerquest Drive Image, you can install the new hard drive as Slave, and with nothing on it clone an image of your Master (old hard drive) to the new. Once the data is transferred, shut down the computer, change the jumpers so the new drive is Master and the old drive is Slave. Enter the BIOS setup and change the parameters for the Master and Slave drives (if not set to "auto"). Boot with a DOS bootdisk and ensure the primary DOS partition is active and type Sys C: to make the master bootable. Windows should boot. There is another way to transfer your old hard drive to the New as slave. From a DOS Prompt within Windows you can use the XCOPY32 command to copy over your data. Note that long file names will be preserved if you do it from within Windows and destroyed if you do it from DOS. Assuming your old hard drive (Master) is C: and your new hard drive (Slave) is D: use the following XCOPY32 C:\ D:\ /R /I /C /H /K /E /Y Yes, the switches spell "richkey" which is an easy way to remember them and you can't go wrong. Here is what the switches mean: C:\ and D:\ are the source and destination directories (root directories of the drives) /R means Overwrites read only files (not necessary here but...) /I means If destination does not exist and copying more than one file, assumes that destination must be a directory. /C means Continues copying even if errors occur (important when it runs into swap file) /H means Copies hidden and system files also. (important!) /K means Copies attributes. Normal Xcopy will reset read-only attributes /E means Copies directories and subdirectories, including empty ones (Important or it will only copy files) /Y means Overwrites existing files without prompting. (not necessary here but..) Once the data is transferred, shut down the computer, change the jumpers so the new drive is Master and the old drive is Slave. Enter the BIOS setup and change the parameters for the Master and Slave drives (if not set to "auto"). Boot with a DOS bootdisk and ensure the primary DOS partition is active and type Sys C: to make the master bootable. Windows should boot. A third way to do this is to install the new hard drive as Slave (note that you may have to change the jumper on your old hard drive to reflect Master with Slave), configure it in the BIOS and then boot Windows. Set Windows Explorer to show all files and extensions in Folder Options - very important!! - and copy over all directories and files except the Windows swap file Win386.SWP. You will encounter an error if you attempt to do this, or your computer may even crash. The reason we do this from Windows is that long file names will be destroyed if we tried this with DOS. Once everything is transferred, shut down the computer and change the jumper configuration the on drives so that the new one is Master. Enter the BIOS setup and change the parameters for the Master and Slave drives (if not set to "auto"). Boot with the boot disk and if you haven't done it already, run the FDisk program and set the Primary DOS partition as active (but don't change any partitions!) Restart from the boot disk and from the A: prompt type sys C: to make the drive bootable. Remove the boot disk and start the computer from the hard drive. If you've done everything correctly Windows should boot. Note: This method has been used by me several times successfully. However, others have reported problems using this method. Therefore I recommend trying the first two suggestions before attempting this third method. One last tip If you remove the old drive and install the new drive, the number of drives in your PC does not change and drive letters are not changed. However, if you add a second hard drive to your PC, most likely one drive letter will change. For example, before you had a hard drive C and a CD-ROM drive D. After adding the new drive, your PC will assign the letter D to the extra hard drive and move the CD-ROM drive letter up one so that you now have a hard drive C, a hard drive D, and a CD-ROM drive E. Of course this is normal and there is nothing wrong with this order. But please note that you may have to reinstall some (only the ones that don't run after this procedure) programs that run from the CD-ROM drive, as the drive letters are now shifted. As an example, if you installed Quake II on your PC when the CD-ROM was the D drive, Quake now expects you to insert the program CD into drive D every time you want to play the game. However, after the drive letter shift the CD-ROM is E, but Quake will still look in D. There are some programs out there that supposedly can search your registry and configuration files and change any reference to the D drive to point to the E drive instead. But due to some bad experiences with these types of programs we recommend that you rather reinstall the application on top of itself from the CD as this method is much safer. Links to Hard Drive Manufacturers Below are links to the most popular hard drive manufacturers where you can find documentation for your specific hard drive including the correct jumper settings. Quantum http://www.quantum.com/ Maxtor http://www.maxtor.com/ Western Digital http://www.westerndigital.com/ Seagate http://www.seagate.com/ Fujitsu http://www.fujitsu.com/harddisk.html IBM http://www.storage.ibm.com/ Toshiba http://www.toshiba.com/taecdpd/products/hdd.htm http://www.PCNineOneOne.com