My question is about attaching another hard drive to the flat ribbon in my
PC. I currently have attached to the ribbon from top of case to the bottom
the following. At the top is a removable caddie, just below it is my DVD
burner, we then drop down to my floppy drive & at the bottom is my current
hard drive 'C' & the ribbon which still has another connector on it before
it attaches itself to the motherboard.

Does the ribbon have to be attached to the various components in any
particular sequence? There is room for a new drive immediately above the
current 'C' drive. Could I put the new drive there & then just move the
connector from the current 'C' drive & put it onto the new drive & if I did
do I have to change the master/slave settings etc.? The other scenario
would seem to be to physically move the current 'c' drive up a notch & then
put the new drive at the bottom of the stack.

I am trying to avoid having the ribbon connector come back up from the
bottom & pass by the already connected 'C' drive. I don't even know if this
would had that been done.
--
Thanks in advance

There are particulars about connecting drives: The drive at the end is
'Master" and the drive in the middle is 'Slave'.

If you do not want to really screw things up then leave your existing C:
drive as the Master, jumper it as Master and put it on the end connector;
put the new one on the middle connector and jumper it as Slave. (If
necessary, re-arrange the drives in the case to make connecting the cable
easier.) Boot the computer, go into the BIOS and verify the drives are
identified correctly.

Is your existing C: drive partitioned as one drive/partition or as multiple
drives/partitions? I ask because if it has multiple partitions then when you
add the new drive your drive letters will shift.

"Past It" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> My question is about attaching another hard drive to the flat ribbon in my
> PC. I currently have attached to the ribbon from top of case to the
> bottom the following. At the top is a removable caddie, just below it is
> my DVD burner, we then drop down to my floppy drive & at the bottom is my
> current hard drive 'C' & the ribbon which still has another connector on
> it before it attaches itself to the motherboard.
>
> Does the ribbon have to be attached to the various components in any
> particular sequence? There is room for a new drive immediately above
> the current 'C' drive. Could I put the new drive there & then just move
> the connector from the current 'C' drive & put it onto the new drive & if
> I did do I have to change the master/slave settings etc.? The other
> scenario would seem to be to physically move the current 'c' drive up a
> notch & then put the new drive at the bottom of the stack.
>
> I am trying to avoid having the ribbon connector come back up from the
> bottom & pass by the already connected 'C' drive. I don't even know if
> this would had that been done.
> --
> Thanks in advance
>

There are only two drive plugs available on any IDE ribbon cable, as each
IDE port can handle two devices - either hard drives, CD's, DVD's etc.

A floppy drive is connected via it own cable and is NOT part of an IDE
cable. It is connected to it own motherboard port, which is NOT an IDE port.

The blue connector (usually a single connector at the end of the cable (as
opposed to two plugs closer together at the other end) goes to the mother
board. The other end plug is for the master drive (assuming you have the
drive set up for "cable select"). The middle plug is for the slave drive
with cable select.

If you have the hard drives jumpered as master and slave, as opposed to
cable select, it does not matter which drive is connected to which of the
two plugs.

You need an 80 wire cable to be able to use the higher UDMA 4 and 5 settings
of the newer drives.

--
Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User

Quote from: George Ankner
"If you knew as much as you thought you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!"

"Past It" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> My question is about attaching another hard drive to the flat ribbon in my
> PC. I currently have attached to the ribbon from top of case to the
> bottom the following. At the top is a removable caddie, just below it is
> my DVD burner, we then drop down to my floppy drive & at the bottom is my
> current hard drive 'C' & the ribbon which still has another connector on
> it before it attaches itself to the motherboard.
>
> Does the ribbon have to be attached to the various components in any
> particular sequence? There is room for a new drive immediately above
> the current 'C' drive. Could I put the new drive there & then just move
> the connector from the current 'C' drive & put it onto the new drive & if
> I did do I have to change the master/slave settings etc.? The other
> scenario would seem to be to physically move the current 'c' drive up a
> notch & then put the new drive at the bottom of the stack.
>
> I am trying to avoid having the ribbon connector come back up from the
> bottom & pass by the already connected 'C' drive. I don't even know if
> this would had that been done.
> --
> Thanks in advance
>

It is assumed you are adding an IDE drive and the cable plugs into the
IDE1 port on the board. There is also an IDE2 port with a cable and
that likely goes to your CD or DVD. The cable in the IDE1 goes to the
"c" drive and that drive is probably set as the Master. The new drive
can be attached to that cable and set as the Slave by setting the
jumpers. Generally, the order in which the drives are attached is not
important unless you have the blue cable already mentioned. In earlier
machines the order was important but that is no longer the case.

Past It Wrote:
> My question is about attaching another hard drive to the flat ribbon in
> my
> PC. I currently have attached to the ribbon from top of case to the
> bottom
> the following. At the top is a removable caddie, just below it is my
> DVD
> burner, we then drop down to my floppy drive & at the bottom is my
> current
> hard drive 'C' & the ribbon which still has another connector on it
> before
> it attaches itself to the motherboard.
>
> Does the ribbon have to be attached to the various components in any
> particular sequence? There is room for a new drive immediately above
> the
> current 'C' drive. Could I put the new drive there & then just move
> the
> connector from the current 'C' drive & put it onto the new drive & if I
> did
> do I have to change the master/slave settings etc.? The other
> scenario
> would seem to be to physically move the current 'c' drive up a notch &
> then
> put the new drive at the bottom of the stack.
>
> I am trying to avoid having the ribbon connector come back up from the
> bottom & pass by the already connected 'C' drive. I don't even know if
> this
> would had that been done.
> --
> Thanks in advance


--
eyemay