[Ham-Computers] Adding an IDE hard drive to a SATA system

[WA5CAB at cs.com]

In a message dated 6/24/2007 5:05:53 PM Central Daylight Time, 
dcorio at zitomedia.net writes: 
>     As to the USB interface, would I be able to set that as part of the 
> dual-boot system I have planned? My goal is to use part of this second 
> drive as a LINUX system, and the rest as storage/archive space for stuff 
> from the primary drive. If it won't boot via the USB setup, it doesn't 
> fill the need.

Someone else will have to answer this, except that unless your system has a 
really weird BIOS and will only handle one IDE drive, there's no reason to 
fiddle with a USB adaptor.

> 
>     I'll have to open the case up to check, but the cable going to the 
> CD burner drive has the extra connector on it already, so if that will 
> work, a new cable isn't necessary. Also, the extra connector is right 
> where a second hard drive would mount.What I don't know is hot to set 
> the device numbers of each drive. I know it's done with the jumpers on 
> the rear, but the specifics are unknown to me. Would the CD drive be 0 
> and the hard-drive 1? What are the jumper positions for both?
> 

Normally if you have an HD and a CD on the Primary IDE buss (apparently the 
only one on your board as on the one here) the HD would be set to Master and 
the CD to Slave  (I know I earlier said 0 &1 - momentary flashback to an earlier 
time).  Most likely, there's a label on the drives that will give you the 
jumper settings.  The choices (if both are relatively new) should be Master, 
Slave and Cable Select.  According to the instruction book for the last of the 
Maxtor drives I had, the boot drive should be configured as Master and connected 
to the black connector on the Ultra ATA (EIDE) cable.  And the CD drive as 
Slave and connected to the gray connector.  I think, although it doesn't say so 
here, that if both drives are configured to Cable Select, the one connected to 
the black connector should become Master.  But I can't swear to that.

If the jumper setting label is missing from either drive, you'll have to try 
to track that information down unless (remote chance) the jumper positions 
themselves are labeled.

Robert Downs - Houston
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